I honestly don't dislike the 2024 ranger, but their level 20 ability feels kinda insulting compared to others. It's really my only complaint. (Not that people really play level 20)
Yeah, ranger feel like a class that require a 1 level dip somewhere else to make it optimal... probably on monk for martial arts, rogue for sneak attack or fighter for another fighting style.
The problem was never that it's weak, it's just that is frustrating to play. It's like they gave a bunch of spells to barbarian when he can't cast any while raging.
You get two free castings of HM. Need to focus down a single Big Bad? Awesome, pop HM For Free, and go to town. Oh, a bunch of minions show up? Drop HM (who cares, you have another free use and didn't cost you anything), and cast Spike Growth or a different concentration spell that suits the situation. I think everyone focuses so hard on HM being concentration, forgetting that you get free uses of it, which means it doesn't matter if you drop concentration on it intentionally or unintentionally.
I keep seeing this but other than the summon spells which you basically get concentration free through different subclasses, and like conjure animals and dominate monster which both come online way later. What spells are the Ranger using it's concentration on? Entangle? In a situation where you don't want to concentrate on hunters mark just drop con and recast it for free later
@@grantgarbour Here are some spells i know the ranger could cast mid combat: Level 1: Fog cloud, ensnaring strike (this os the main one, it can shutdown a group of enemies and it works like divine smite, so it only activates when you have already hit the enemy, so you can be pretty cost effective with this one), zephyr strike and entangle. Level 2: Gust of wind, healing spirit, silence, spike growth and summon beast. Level 3: Ashadarlon's stride, conjure animals, flame arrows, elemental weapon, protection from energy, summon fey and wind wall. Level 4: Conjure woodland beings, dominate beast, grasping vine, guardian of nature, stoneskin and summon elemental. Level 5: Wrath of nature. And on every combat situation i can think off, i can find at least one spell in each level within this list that would be better then hunter's mark.
A couple points: - The problem is that you are locked into using Hunter's mark and concentrating on it. Other than the Fey Wanderer and Summon Fey, the cost of casting any other concentration spell is incredibly high. - While TWF is considerably better, this build would do a lot worse at range due to less attacks per turn. Ranged Ranger is also a very common archetype that needs considered. - How often were you counting on that bonus action attack in your numbers? As you mentioned, your bonus action is needed for applying/moving/recasting hunters mark a lot of the time. - similarly are you assuming you precast summon fey or spending a full turn to setup casting it? The baseline builds you compare to have no setup required.
Just a point of my own: Melee needs to do more dmg than ranged to be worth using, due to the increased risks and limitations presented by being a melee class. If melee doesn't do enough additional dmg, it just won't be worth taking all the extra risks, which is a major balance problem in 5e and has been since 2014.
@@TheTdroid The problem with thinking that ranged ranger being weaker is OK because range needs to be weaker, is that, even though that premise is true, ranger takes this much too far. a ranged ranger is not simply merely weaker than a melee ranger, they are weaker than a ranged ranger that simply refuses to use their class features, and therefore, also weaker than a ranged character of a class with more applicable class features. Pact tactics was able to demonstrate that if you can only make 2 attacks in an action and 1 as a bonus action, if it be from handcrossbows or beastmaster, your total valued output will go down if you use your bonus action to mark someone compared to if you just attacked without casting any spells. In other words, unless you play this build specifically, there's a good chance that the act of using huntersmark lowers your damage instead of raising it.
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar Firstly, a ranged character should do less damage than a melee character for the simple reason that melee characters take on significantly more risks and limitations that ranged ones do not have to deal with. Things that melee characters deal with: - Higher risk of dying, often forcing defensive actions like disengaging or dodging - Having insufficient movement, reducing their ability to do damage - Having to hang back, because spellcasters are planning on doing things like casting Web. Melee needing higher damage output than ranged isn't "just because". It's because there are factors that reduce the effective damage output of melee character that ranged characters are at much less risk of experiencing. If a ranged character deals the same amount of damage as a melee character, there is no reason to play melee because the ranged character will have significantly higher effective damage. Secondly, to the more implicit point in your post: Rangers and Paladins should not, under any circumstances, be top DPR characters in the game. Classes like Fighters and Rogues *should* do quite a lot more damage than Rangers and Paladins, because those classes have a much more narrow focus and less access to special abilities that Rangers and Paladins have. The martial vs half-caster thing should be a choice about whether you want to be the best at being a martial, or if you want a wider set of skills.
I think the issue is that multiple class features and even a couple subclass features are tied to a 1st level spell that doesn't even upcast for increased damage. I think the best comparison you can make to explain how silly it sounds, is imagine if warlock had 4 features for Hex. Is it bad? Not really, but it isn't great either since you will likely have other concentration spells you want to cast.
Ironically it would be super cool if Warlock had multiple Invocations that enhance Hex with new functionalities (probably including being able to cast it without Concentration), allowing players to focus on that playstyle.
Here's a breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of the 2024 Ranger compared to 2014/Tashas. First the positives: +Vastly improved spellcasting feature (available at 1, more spells known, capable of switching 1 spell on a long rest, druidic focuses ported from Tasha's Ranger) +Upgraded Fighting Style feature +Favored Enemy/HM deals more damage than Favored Foe +Weapon Mastery +Roving is now 10 feet extra movement as opposed to 5 +Expertise at 9 +Relentless Hunter at 13 +Nature's Veil now lasts until the end of your next turn +Precise Hunter at 17 +Reworked Feral Senses Now the minuses: -Favored Enemy/HM is clunkier than Favored Foe -No Primal/Primeval Awareness -Roving now requires you don't wear heavy armor -no Land's Stride -Tireless now runs off Wisdom instead of PB (this is explicitly a nerf for Rangers as they're MAD) -Nature's Veil pushed all the way back to 14 AND also based off Wisdom -no Vanish -new Foe Slayer is terrible Overall the 2024 Ranger is stronger and more streamlined in some areas while being clunkier and outright weaker than Tasha's in a few others. It also lacks flavor features tying it to it's role as a guardian of nature, which is awkward when Druids get to reinforce their ties to nature with Wild Companion and Primal Order. Feels more like a sidegrade of Tasha's rather than a purely updated class. It's also important to point out this doesn't include spells. A good number of Ranger spells have been reworked, makng them more useful, however the biggest changes are to the reworked Conjure spells and whether the reworks are better or not is subject to opinion. Rangers also don't get Minor Elementals (the strongest one).
Other Negatives: Conjure Animals is worthless. Relies on a trap spell. Overall, in actuality, the power floor was raised, and the power celling came crashing down
Here is a reality that I have seen basically every single DnD TH-camr ignore; the argument seems to always be "yes there are weak levels, but you can just ignore the bad features and use the good ones. Good features eventually come". Most DnD games last for months and never make it past level 10. Whenever you're told to "wait a couple levels for the good features", you need to remember you're asking someone to play a class that is not fun for potentially MONTHS in the hopes of getting to something that is fun. Why not... just play a fun class? The Ranger is not super weak - it's boring. The issue isn't the numbers it's the fact that they feel like they get so few interesting, fun, or unique features. Additionally, the design pushes you basically in a single direction. If you don't want to be a Ranger focusing on Hunter's Mark, you're giving up FOUR class features. Even if you do, the BA conflict is not resolved. A Beastmaster Ranger cannot set up Hunter's Mark and get their companion to attack in the same turn.multiclassing is also hell because so many good features "Flurry of Blows, Divine Smite, Steady Aim, etc) also use a BA. You can absolutely make a mechanically fun Ranger. It doesn't change the fact the class is just Fighter 2 with less interesting features and theming. A Rogue is weaker but has way stronger flavour and is way more distinct and fun to play.
The biggest reason for this is that Ranger has always been meant for the exploration pillar of the game, specifically wilderness exploration, and WotC have severely neglected exploration mechanics. The rangers have no wilderness to range.
In my opinion it’s not a bad class it’s a feel bad class. It feels bad because you can’t use all of your abilities to their fullest. If you want to use your spell casting to the best of its abilities you have to ignore the features that buff hunters mark. If you want to use hunters mark to the fullest it limits your spell casting choices, even some of the subclass features clash with hunters mark.
This is an opinion I can certainly respect. You can't use everything together, and it would be nicer if you could. I do think though that both Hunter's Mark and other concentration spells have places that you would want to use them. Hunter's Mark is normally better against individual big enemies, something like Conjure Animals is better against lots of smaller ones.
@@the_twig131 I agree but then it leaves me to feel what I as the opportunity cost of focusing so much on hunters mark when you could have given features that could have benefited more than a level 1 spell. What if the features they did give gave buffs to other things, like the feature that lets hm become unbreakable gave advantage to concentration save on other spells. So it’s still strongest with hm but not completely unused if you use another spell. Also when subclass also use the bonus action such as a he beast master needs to transfer hunters mark but also command their beast. Why not include a feature even at higher levels where you could do both? I mean i do think people are blowing things out of proportion but I do see where they are comes from and think the ranger could have used one more draft just to smooth out these rough edges
The free castings of HM is what makes it completely fine with other Concentration spells. Use HM when you need to focus down a target. If you need to drop concentration or you unintentionally drop concentration, it doesn't matter. It didn't cost you anything in the first place.
@@jakeryker3751 so do other spells. But they also cost a spell slot. Just use HM when it makes sense. It's the same thing as Paladin Smite. Except you actually have to think strategically when deciding when to use it.
Poorly, but literally every martial not using Conjure Minor Elementals compares poorly. You have basically picked Van Gough and asked how my mate Jimmy the professional artist compares.
@@Rexir2 ya we start our 1st 2024 game this month and this has already been house ruled even though we were supposed to be doing everything RAW for the 1st time in like 8 years since its a "new" system.
Quick note about your suggestions for feats at lvl 13. Grappler says that the punch and grab attack must be made with the attack action so you wouldnt get to do it with your BA. Also you need a free hand to grapple an enemy which is possible with weapon swapping but I dont think that was your intention.
@the_twig131 you could replace a sword attack with an unarmed strike to utilize it. And with weapon juggling, you can technically twf with 1 hand. It's still an option technically
Because of how Great Weapon Master is worded, you can apply it to a longbow. So, I have a Turok-inspired Ranger Archer I'm eager to try that adds his prof bonus to his archery damage. I'm planning on making him a Hunter subclass.
Only problem is you need a 13 strength making the Rangers even more MAD. It's great for fighters now they can be really good in melee and range combat.
Ah, it doesn't take much to incite the naysayers. "Fighter does this better already," and the like. Admittedly, the 'Turok' concept does rely on letting the Wisdom score suffer a bit (14) to get the Strength to the pre-requisite 13 to take the Great Weapon Master feat. It just means that the flavor of magic gets dedicated to non-saving throw utility spells. No ensnaring strikes, more detect magic and the like.
Talking with friends, it seems to be the identity part that bothers people rather than the pure mechanics. Ranger feels even more watered down than 2017. They gave them damage-focused features that aren't unique to them, which also demand action economy and concentration, thus narrowing your mechanical choices if you want to make use of their features. I don't understand why they wouldn't dial in on the "half caster with a pet" feature of rangers, and make Beast Master basically a core part of the class. Or if they're dead set on hunter's mark, why not add features like Beast Master's level 11 Bestial Fury being able to move hunter's mark to the target of their attack when you command them with your bonus action? I don't think the 2024 ranger is bad. But what I wonder is what right now makes me want a level 11 ranger instead of a multiclass level 5 fighter, level 6 druid? Are those differences evocative and compelling from a flavor and mechanical perspective? How does that change as you progress beyond 11th level?
From what i've seen the new melee seems to be significantly improved while new ranged isnt much better than old ranged(maybe even worse at some points). Which sounds like a good thing melee should deal much better damage than ranged but this also means optimized martials will be much more vulnearable now. I start to understand what pack tactics meant when he said the floor has been raised, not the ceiling.
Yes, absolutely. Melee damage is much better now, and also just generally has a lot more things that you can do because of Masteries. Range does probably do less damage than in 2014. Personally, I think that that's just an all around good thing.
My argument wouldn't be that the new Ranger is weak, it's just poorly designed. Making a class lose 4 features to use another feature (spellcasting) is just not very good design. I believe making Hunters mark concentration free would have just made the problem worse, not better. The Ranger needs a way to cast spells while also keeping the ability to use, what WotC has decided is, a core feature of the class. A potential fix could have been a feature like "If casting a spell that requires concentration caused you to lose concentration on hunters mark, you may cast hunters mark without expending a spell slot." Sure it would only give you a first level mark, but it wouldn't make you feel as punished for using another concentration spell. In conclusion, the new Ranger may be powerful, but that doesn't mean that the class isn't poorly designed.
@@elijahherstal776 I can see going that direction as well, but in that case what could your full martial Ranger do that would make him stand out from the Fighter, Rogue, or Barbarian. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept, but if I was going to, for example, build a Rangers Apprentice type Ranger in Dnd it would be a Rogue/Monk multiclass.
@@chiepah2 that's the problem- D&D's writers suck at making Martial Classes. Potential Solution: Remove Ranger and Rogue entirely, merge them together and drop the stump-humper magic nonsense, focus on ambush/stealth/sneak attacks (ranged and melee), etc.- call it a 'Strider'.
@@elijahherstal776 I agree, the rogue can just handle the ranger class, you can't get rid of rogue, it's too iconic, but you could make martial ranger subclasses part of rogue and make magical ranger subclasses part of druid, except gloomstalker, that one is a perfect fit for rogue.
@@chiepah2 you most certainly can get rid of it, because it only exists because people don't do dungeons anymore. "Thief" used to have a purpose, "Rogue" was created to fill a gap that didn't need to be filled. Rogues are garbage as they are, Rangers are only garbage because the writers are midwits. And 'refusing to let go' is part of the reason D&D is in such sad shape as it is. But, it's great for drawing in midwit tourists.
I think you've missed why people are calling ranger bad. It's because the class is kinda boring still. If you don't cast hunter's mark, you just don't have certain features, and that sucks if you want to do literally anything else with your concentration. People can see how it's strong mechanically, but having an entire class being based around one spell is bad design whether that spell is good or not.
You have to try approaching hunter’s mark differently in this case. Don’t think of it as your big option if you really want to use a huge concentration spell, think of it as the go to expendable option you pick in every other situation. Because you get a really good amount of free usages of hunter’s mark and it can last for an hour, you can be very liberal in when and how you apply them. The hour duration means you can easily keep one cast of hunter’s mark up between multiple fights, with the many free uses allowing you to freely deactivate and reactivate it as needed. If a situation arises where another concentration spell is needed, it’s really easy to drop hunter’s mark then turn it on again after this other concentration spell isn’t needed or is lost. Intermixing and alternating these spells is going to be ranger’s MO, and with the free uses and duration it’s a balancing act that I believe can be used favorably. All this said though I think something to unlock hunter’s marks concentration would have been a really cool 20th level ability and miles better than the 2024 capstone foe slayer. If any 2024 Ranger I play ever reaches level 20, it will definitely multiclass at least 1 level into something else.
People are absolutely saying that the ranger is bad. Like a lot of people are claiming it's mechanically weak. I chatted with 2 separate people who both claimed that the rogue out damaged the ranger by level 7 and that the gap only got bigger from there. That's an extreme case but they are far from the only people who say the ranger needs a buff, in fact most of the homebrew "fixes" I've seen for the ranger have focused on buffing the class.
Yeah, a lot of people are saying that it's bad because it's weak, primarily because it's been somewhat stuck in the public conscience that Hunter's Mark is a bad spell, which it isn't. As @chaserandalow8548 said, you have so many free uses that you can just put it up, then drop it fairly freely. It's not your locked in spell for the entire fight. In fact, because it doesn't use a spell slot, a Hunter might cast HM just to use Hunter's Lore to find out any vulnerabilities or resistances, and then cast their actual concentration spell with their action. Then, later in the fight when their Spike Growth or whatever isn't useful any more, just throw Hunter's Mark back up to finish off the last little bit.
@@the_twig131 Your not wrong with you opinion and how it works but you also have to think about the other end of things. What if we simply don’t want to use that spell? Not because it’s a bad spell. It’s decent but not something I’d want to base a whole class on. If you don’t like the spell and don’t wanna use it, you’re simply fucked. You don’t get any class features then. You can multi class sure, but what about those who want to be a full ranger? They just fucked then? And the fact the hunters mark is a bonus action makes it infinitely worse, there’s so many things I’d rather be doing. Like if I was a beast master, I have to use my bonus action to tell it what to do. That alone interferes with HM. It’s just very limiting and boring is the problem. Why would I want to be a ranger using the same spell over and over and over again throughout the whole game? It doesn’t have the same power or impact as smite or fireball. Ya know?
I have a hard time choosing scimitar for weapon mastery when the dagger is available and can be thrown, it’s like 1 point of avg damage but the ability to increase reach by 20/60 feet seems like a fair trade
I don't think that they necessarily will, just because unless you're not wearing armour, you get no benefit. Your BA Unarmed Strikes and DEX based Monk Weapons turn off as soon as you so much as pick up a shield, and that can result in a huge reduction in AC, unless you also have high WIS and aren't considering magic items.
@@the_twig131 Fair, but I think the bonus action unarmed strike is really good, as a high Dex char your Wis is probably a +2 since you want to make your perception checks, so light armor and shield would only net +1 in most cases. Unless magic items, which should be easier to get a hold of now too. However, I think a 2 level dip is still going to be really attractive to any Dex char except rogue who would go further than that for more damage options. It feels weird to say go more monk for more damage options.
i feel like the issues i see in ranger as a class will be, if HM was a buff to accuracy(ie a psudo bless, 1BA, 1 target, 1d4 to hit on target foe, no concentration, remove on recast) and just make it not a spell, then make subclass features far enough down the line you cant to 3 level dips to get give it damage boosts or other features, i would like it more, or just make that idea the feature of ranger, and leave HM out of it. this is kind of me dipping into pf2 for inspiration, but it feels like that would make the ranger have definition i would like to see.
I could see some sort of feature that would make Ranger the most accurate, yeah. You'd need to be careful with it, you couldn't put it at 1, but it could definitely come later.
I'd like to bring up that if you're weapon juggling to keep a shield in your off hand, you can actually take the dueling fighting style instead of two weapon fighting and get slightly more damage out of it depending on level. Really cool tech for champion fighters in particular.
Ranger is one of the classes I am looking forward to playing personally, specifically beast master ranger, using beast of the land, and short sword and scimitar, with a long bow for back up weapon when you can't or don't want to go to melee for whatever reason. Just using Hunter's Mark, at 5th level you do 3-4 attacks per round (depending on whether or not you have to use bonus action that turn to move hunters mark), you always start with having your beast companion attack, doing 1d6+1d8+5 damage, and automatically knocking the target prone on a hit, no save if it is smaller than huge. Then you follow up with your own attacks, which are at advantage if your companion knocked the target prone, and your first two attacks are with short sword with the vex property so even if you didn't already have advantage, after your first hit you will, followed by nick attack from scimitar if you didn't need to use your bonus action for hunters mark, each of those 2-3 attacks does 2d6+4 damage, with very high chance to having advantage. That is total of 7d6+1d8+17 damage total if you didn't need to move hunters mark, or 5d6+1d8+13 if you did, or average of 39/28 damage per round, which is pretty sweet damage for 5th level. And this isn't even counting in what damage boosts you might get from feats you took, apart from the +1 to dex.
It's not mechanically weak, but I feel it has somehow too many competing class features. Beastmaster needs their bonus action for their pet, but they also need it for hunters mark. And ranger can't go all in on two weapon fighting because they need their bonus action for hunters mark. And they can't often concentrate on their cooler spells, because so many of their class abilities are tied to hunters mark. For some reason, monks and rogues having multiple alternative uses for their bonus action feels good, but for some reason for rangers it makes you feel you are missing out on something. I wonder if it's because hunter's mark also takes concentration? In 2014 you could just ignore humters mark after low levels. I think that was good. In 2024 version the class is really trying to push you towards using it.
I think the 2024 version will be better than the 2014, but that's a low bar to meet. The 2014 Ranger wasn't very good, even though the "Ranger Bad" meme did exaggerate how bad it was. They pretty much depended on ludicrously imbalanced spells for a lot of their power, and it was more a testament to how broken certain spells (PWT, Conjure Animal etc) could be than the Ranger actually being good. That being said, I feel like they're not actually committing to this new Ranger identity based around Hunter's Mark. Most of the upgrades only come online at super high level. Here are some changes I would've liked to see: - Continous damage scaling: Hunter's Mark should increase in damage with regular intervals. d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12. I would probably put the dmg upgrades at lvl 7, 11 and 15 to follow the archetype. - Completely redesigned capstone. d10 Hunter's Mark is a joke of a capstone feature. Removing Concentration from Hunter's Mark would be a cool lvl 20 capstone to truly unleash the power of the Ranger. - Never lose concentration is something I would put at level 7 or 8. 13 is way too late for that quality of life improvement. - Advantage against marked targets: Move it to lvl 13. We're competing with 7th lvl spells, people. - With the advantage being pushed down, I would add another buff to HM at the level advantage used to be: You can make 1 additional attack against a marked target once per turn.
I’m about to run a beast master ranger as a halfling. Going for a mounted combatant. We decided to house rule hex and hunters mark as non concentration spells for the campaign and see how it goes. The key spell is beast bond to give my mount advantage on all attacks and I picked up the cavalier saddle to gain disadvantage to hit the beast always on.
I never thought of the ranger as weak. I just think it's really bad design to route so many features through a spell that will rarely be cast anyway. And the capstone is a joke. You either need to decouple those features from HM or reduce the heavy cost of opportunity by removing concentration from HM by level 5 (or even earlier) for rangers. Yes, that is a buff to the class. But the purpose is to remove the lie the class chassis is telling players. Not everyone will fall for it, but many will. And that is bad design.
I had not considered dipping Monk for what is essentially Dual Wielder's main benefit. That is a really good idea, and increases the effectiveness of grappling down the line - which is especially nice on a character that can cast Spike Growth.
Defensive duelist at 4? You can just get the shield spell with an origin feat and that works with ranged attacks and ranged spell attacks. I know it's not an optimized build but like for a normal game with 1 or 2 encounters, you don't need defensive duelist because you're not conserving your spell slots for long adventuring days. You're not going to run out of resources if that's what you're worried about. I don't like your feat picks but whatever. This kills things. That's all that matters.
How frequent were you moving hunter's mark in these calculations? This is especially important for the Pet Subclasses since bonus action is almost always. Also what about those that don't have much love for HM? Especially for subclasses like Swarmkeeper that has other stronger concentration spells.
Any class comparison is going to depend on the campaign and DM. Combat is the easiest pillar to model, but it is not (usually) the only aspect of a campaign. If support/utility features don't provide enough value to offset lower combat value, that's on the DM/adventur author. The change from known to prepared spells should be a significant improvement, provided the campaign/DM provide sufficient context to allow the character to prepare spells tactically. Rangers (and paladins) now know the entire ranger/paladin "spell book", which should make the utility spells much better simply by drastically lowering the opportunity cost (long rest versus level slot commitment). Ultimately, though, WotC needs to address the exploration pillar mechanics. Ironically, I think much of the problem has been the ranger archetype of "master of the outdoors". When one class has mastery and the rest (with the possible exception of druid) have zero aptitude, it can't be a satisfying game pillar. Either every group would need someone to play a ranger or the pillar gets ignored. If bookkeeping were a (supposed) game pillar, the Accountant class would suck. I think the solution is to make non-rangers better at outdoorsy stuff, with both class stuff and general character skills. The skill list has decent mechanical support for the social pillar (persuasion, deception, intimidation, etc.), and there are lots of support spells, but exploration skills get lumped into generic "survival". Expanding the skills to explicitly include rangery stuff like tracking, hunting, or whatever would provide the same mechanical hooks upon which to hang spells, (sub)class features etc. Once enough characters have access to the skills, DMs and authors can actually integrate them into the adventures. Rangers could thus be exceptionally, but not exclusively, good at these in the same way a bard is with the social pillar or rogues are with sneaky shit.
I enjoy my 2024 ranger. Having to balance what spells I cast is no different than any other spellcaster. I say this as a beast master ranger that needs access to my bonus action. So, as said in the video, I use a Nick and 2 weapon fighting every round. I have the 2 wpn fighting feat, and crossbow mastery, so I have a ranged weapon and a scimitar. My DM is already tired of my 4 attacks a round (8th level converted character),
I feel that a solution to this would have been allowing you to mark a creature as your favored foe when you cast Hunter's Mark on it, hit it with a spell attack, or when it fails a saving throw against your spell. You have advantage on Intelligence checks to recall knowledge on your favored foe and you can only have one favored foe at a time. Then the later features that buff hunters mark becone general buffs against your favored enemy. So level 13 could be your concentration cannot be broken by your favored foe. level 17 gives you advantage on attacks against your favored foe. Perhaps the capstone could be hunters mark as a free action idk, anything other than what it currently is. Basically i do not think the 13th, 17th, and 20th level features should be solely boosting a level 1 concentration spell. That design is ridiculous and is the biggest reason as to people being mad at this ranger design imo.
I’m not satisfied with this Ranger. It is not weak by any means and it is better than in 2014. What I dislike about it is that HM competes a lot with their other concentration spells and some of the improvements it gets feel a little late. Also I dislike the removal of the flavor features. They were bad mechanically but gave a lot of flavor and helped define the identity of the class. I’d prefer they fix them instead, as it stands now the class identity feels weak
What you are forgeting is that EVERY ClASS received a MASSIVE buff, so yeah, the hunter improved, of course, but got far behind than other classes... If you compare any class to the 2014 versión , the numbers are going ti say that the new one is better
To make my point, most of the damage increase you noticed come from changes to game mechanic like the new dualwielding that improved a lot. Every martial class can use two weapons and benefits from that. All other martial clases got unique improvements and the ranger just got the tashas versión printed on the core book. That's almost it
I think the biggest thing people gloss over is the fact that you get FREE castings of HM. This means you can use HM when you need to focus down a single prioriry target, and then drop concentration whenever you need to. It doesn't matter, cuz it didn't cost you anything to begin with. Then you spend your very precious and few spell slots on other spells for the right situations. Also if you lose concentration oh HM unintentionally, it doesnt matter either, since you have atleast 2 FREE castings of that spell. Just throw it up again if you need to. All the new HM features do is give you more options than before. In 2014 HM was a trap spell, now its actuality useful.
I disagree that Hunter's Mark is a good spell, at least in a vacuum. Hunter's Mark has been studied to death; It's only "good" now because it's been given system changes and class features to justify its use. In 5e (no 2024) Hunter's Mark is not only objectively a bad spell past around LVL 4, it's a trap spell. When the Ranger gets in the habit of only using Hunter's Mark, they don't consider that damage is only second best thing you can do in this system next to control. There's also this constant battle against misinformation about the ranger basically since the start of 5e. Ranger FEELS weak even though it was only a few years before optimisers discovered Rangers have a really good spell list and benefit a lot from multiclassing. Since Tashas, Ranger has been genuinely competing with Paladin for strongest half caster but the general perception (i.e. most people, not optimisers) still had the idea ranger had only become less bad. I think it was people seeing how bad Beastmaster ranger looks and feels in Critical Role that got this impression because it had such a huge influence on the 5e community back when it was smaller. I still meet people to this day that still think ranger post-tashas is weak even though optimised ranger builds have mind boggling damage AND utility with spells like Good Berry, Spike Growth and Pass Without Trace. Ranger will always have an unnecessarily critical lens over it's perception simply for the reason that it doesn't feel strong.
Well said. I think the 2014 ranger was legitimately underpowered but I was very happy with the state of the ranger under tashes. My current problem with this ranger is that it has pigeonholed be into using hunters mark to access class features. In game design terms I think class features should always be on. Not dependent on me using a particular spell and certainly not dependent upon me using my concentration on it.
Uhh there’s only three half casters. As a multi class ranger is nice now though. My Druid can dip it, start using a bow & add some hail of thorns for an extra bump of damage plus those elemental d8s.
First off, very interesting build here. Ranger/Monk has great synergy between the 2, shame that it was only a 1lvl dip into monk. 2ndly, while a badass, it's having the same feel as a Rogue or Shadow Monk with the focus on Melee and sneaking damaging. The Fey Wanderer spells that don't need concentration are fantastic, but unless a lot of the Ranger spells removed the Concentration tag, it's kinda forcing the players to either use Hunter's Mark that the class has become centered around, or go with other spells and severely fall behind. And, I agree, a no Concentration Hunter's Mark would be powerful, but that's if it was kept as is. In a homebrew I made with friends, I had it as a d4 rather than a d6 to take away the Concentration. But if they marked their Favored Foe, yes I kept that, then the damage increased to a d6.
Hunter's Mark could be doing 8d6 of damage with every hit and it would still be a bad feature to give to the Ranger as it's identity. It locks you out of most your spell slots of you use it and if you ignore it, then there's just a bunch of useless feel-bad features for your character, it's objectively a badly designed class. Imagine if you gave the Barbarian spells, but keep Rage as it is, so you just have to choose between using half the features of your class or leaving them just filling soace on your character sheet, this is not a compelling design. The Ranger could be really strong sure, but it's playstyle clashes with people's expectations of fullfiling it's class fantasy; you can just look at the amount of homebrews for the new ranger to know that a large amount of people are dissatisfied with it. They had a decade to come up with a compelling desing for the class and they gave us the same old shit in a slightly nicer package and, at this point, I don't think they have a clue about how to make this archetype of character work and I think they will never figure it out.
My issue with the ranger is how despite being a class made for exploration they haven't improved the Exploration pillar of the game and leaned very heavily into the Combat Pillar. While favoured terrain was kind of bad it as a feature to describe the ranger was great, deft explorer just feels lazy, but the capstone is probably the laziest feature. 2024 ranger has not helped i still hate it i dont want to but really disappointed with how they handled it. I also lost it when Jeromy Crawford went over the Cleric War domain and how by using channel divinity could cast both Spiritual weapon and Shield of faith without concentration meanwhile a ranger still has to concentrate on Hunters mark for an extra 1d6 damage as one of its signature abilities.
So I think that Favoured Terrain is the most surface level loss imaginable. That feature did almost nothing. What we got instead was rituals. There's really good ones that mostly do what the Ranger wants to do exploration wise. The exploration pillar is lacking though, that's fair. As for Hunter's Mark, I really do not think that it should be non-conc. Spiritual weapon is once per turn, and Shield of Faith is defensive. Hunter's Mark scales directly with the number of attacks. That's incredibly dangerous to remove concentration on.
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar Divine Favor is 1d4 and Paladin exclusive. Paladin is probably using a shield, so it is less likely to interact with two weapon fighting. Heck, take a one level dip into Paladin, pick it up, and stack it with Hunter's Mark. Also radiant vs. force but we'll have to wait for the MM to see how significant that is (I suspect that Ranger and Monk getting force damage for their magical attacks is supposed to be superior to most other classes getting radiant for their magical attacks).
@@XanderHarris1023 You can't just give paladin a feature that improves dual wielding that much, and give them access to the dual wielding fighting style, and then just assume they aren't dual wielding. Even if you do assume they aren't dual wielding, since it only requires one bonus action for the entire spell, it also works with PaM to a far greater degree than huntersmark. Why is a spell being paladin exclusive a reason to make it nonconc, but a spell being ranger exclusive isn't? I get that exclusives tend to be more powerful especially on half casters, but they're both half casters and it's far more important that spells that an entire half caster class like the ranger is built around are non concentration than just any ole paladin exclusive. I think having huntersmark be in a concentration design space is as big as a mistake as it would be if divine smite was concentration
@@gloryrod86I also think it’s cool, it’s just not as cool as the other classes. Like look at what they did for Monk, they made it cooler and stronger. For Ranger, they just made it stronger but IMO made it less cool by replacing it’s unique features with expertise and making Hunter’s Mark mandatory for a quarter of the class’s features.
It's funny that you claim you can make this much stronger, yet the only way to truly enhance it would be by casting Conjure Woodland Beings. Without using that spell, this remains the strongest Ranger subclass solely because of the no-concentration Summon Fey ability. The only subclass that could surpass it in damage is the Beastmaster with Conjure Woodland Beings, but that's only through very gamey movement tactics. The biggest issue with the Ranger class is that a significant portion of your damage later on relies on a concentration spell. Additionally, nearly half of the spells you take also require concentration. Another problem is how heavily you rely on your bonus action-there are about 10 different abilities that demand its use. Is this version of the Ranger better than Tasha's? Yes, but only because you get Hunter's Mark and spells at level one, along with weapon masteries. Aside from that, most changes are either insignificant or don't make the class stronger or weaker some could even be considered nerfs. It's stronger than the 2024 Rogue, and its early game damage is better than other martial classes. However, that depends on maintaining concentration. Without Warcaster (which you never took), you'll likely lose concentration quickly in melee. By around level 6 and beyond, Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, and Monks either catch up or surpass the Ranger in overall effectiveness. The only spell that truly helps is Conjure Woodland Beings, but using it means sacrificing three class features, as you're not using Hunter's Mark.
My fuzzy friend I think you are totally wrong in many ways and I will try to be brief. Let me whip this out (rolls out his 30 scroll 📜 with tiny type). The issue is not if the Ranger is more or less powerful then the original (2014) 5e Ranger. It matters vs the 5e revised PHB classes. If the metric was beating the disaster of 5e original then Tasha already defeated that goal and it is not worth having. Hunters Mark is a horrible thing to strap on a class. If it was no concentration it would have been fine and if redesigned it could have been great. Many many tables don’t run it with concentration as it is but it they simply made one changes a non-concentration would work - 1Make it trigger only twice. That is it it is simple and sweet. But Hunters Mark is also not great for other reasons. It is concentration means that the new player will want to always cast is and when you tie class features to it you loose class features if you don’t use it. This all feels bad and it is not an experience I think any other core class has. Now a fix on this (if you kept concentration on HM then just let it be that you can maintain concentration on HM if you cast a HIGHER LEVEL RANGER SPELL. Triggering and moving the spell should be done after a successful weapon hit so that prevents other collision like controlling a beast for example. (There are no rangers that do that right). I don’t have the book but this would solve the spell and subclass feature collisions the class suffers from (as I understand it). The loss of identity is linked to the issues they have always had. The issue is that we have the Rangers as a mix of fighter-Rogue-Druid. But Rangers are meant to do things others can’t and not be a poor man’s Gish . This is an ongoing issue since at least 3.5e. This is still not resolved as far as the reviews have said. I will not see the new revised 5e book (reasons) unless someone tosses it at my head so I am limited on things to fix with out the written details. But until they recognize the solo Identity part of the Ranger I think they miss where people are coming from. But when they remove so many elements (according to the DnD beyond article) and they say you have skills for that, I don’t see this as better. There is a way to make this work but as I am fact limited I just make the point I am skeptical. They also did not have any weapon styles that they should have had because they go to the core fantasy of the group of heros called Rangers. I will leave those for another wall of text but suffice to say they’re not super powerful but if you add the flavor that arrange your needs. I will finish this quite appropriately with the capstone, which is the aspirational end of any class. How many times have you seen or heard of players that stayed a paladin just because one day they thought just maybe they could get to that 20th level. Oh just to have a shot to be that ultra powerful paladin - an avenging angel on the battlefield that even the most powerful wizard has to think twice about. Of course almost no one got there but that’s the entire point of them they are massively aspirational. They speak to the core concept of the class and the revised 2024 Ranger has one - Hunters Mark is going from 1D6 to 1D10. So good. So impressive😂 I did just notice something in your augment you avoided going to level 20. Was that on purpose there my fuzzy friend.😂 Still you are my buddy and I am just disappointed and disagreeing with you. This was a missed opportunity. Monks lost stun lock. Paladins lost massive nova strikes (pleural). And both of those fans passed their beer to the Ranger fans.
People don't like the ranger because they sucked the flavor out of it, not because it doesn't do well in a spreadsheet. They may have well just called it the Hunter's Mark Master. PS - Just for the record, the spell daylight doesn't actually make sunlight so it doesn't do anything extra special in a vampires layer.
I think that the flavour is still there, it's just in the spells. Rangers have so many good exploration spells or specific counter-picks, and they can now switch them out every day, to prepare for the day ahead. As a Ranger Player, they encourage you to think about what you're going to be doing today, and I think that's cool. Also Daylight now does specifically mention sunlight.
It kinda makes me think Ranger16/Monk4 looks cool. Ranger1/Monk1 seems interesting tho. You get some movement, a BA attack (in addition to the nick attack) better dagger damage, reasonable AC. You could do Monk 2 any time between level 3 to 7 depending on when you want deflect attack and how much you value 2 flurries per short rest (for 2d6+3 damage slaps) versus Ranger subclass features. Then take Ranger up to 15 with monk 3 whenever the monk subclass will do the most good (id say at Ranger 8 or 12). Level 19 you take Ranger 16 for an epic boon and at 20 you take Monk 4 for another epic boon. (Or the other way around for a 4th ki point at Lv19
You'd rather just go ranger until 5 and then go into monk The bonus action attack isn't something you benefit much from with hunters mark and you'll want extra attack and spells faster
My idea for improving the hunter’s mark features everyone is mad about was a 6th level feature to let them cast and reassign Hunter’s mark without using a BA, and then to remove concentration at level 10, bump damage to 1d8 at level 13, level 17 stay the same, then the Foeslayer capstone to add your Wisdom modifier to attack rolls against your hunter’s mark and bump the damage to 1d12. I think those features at those levels would make it hard for multiclassing to abuse them, like anything past 3 levels can hardly be called a dip yanno?
so let me start by saying that this build is solid, but I don't think people have a problem with the ranger in terms of damage or optimization. there have been a good few who have defended this class and I tend to agree that they are a very good class to play mechanically. and second, is that I can only speak for myself. firstly, it's what the creator said about this being a brand new class when, in reality, he should've said that they updated the class cause it feels the same they just brought Tasha stuff over and made hunters mark mandatory. and on the issue of hunters Mark, it clashes with other spells if you want to do any other spell, you have to not be using hunters Mark, which the class heavily encourages you to do and it feels as though hunters Mark kinda pushes the ranger to a heavily ranged class because it really feels as though most of rangers abilities are effective at range as well as just not having any defensive abilities, which can hurt your hunters mark until later in the game. other martial classes have some form of sustainability like the fighter and paladin or evasive maneuvers like the monk or rogue. now, I'll say I don't mind ranged ranger builds, but if your going to say that ranger can use almost anything and still be viable is kind of not true. but I did enjoy the video and look forward to seeing what you upload next.
You made an error in your damage calculations by assuming Conjure Fey would always be up before Initiative and last the whole fight. Do the same math but give fighter two actions on turn one and rangers 0 and see that fights need to take well over a minute before rangers catch up. Remove Conjure fey and this build is awful damage from level 11 on, which is... exactly why hunter's mark needs to have concentration removed. You just showed that combining hunters mark with another spell is absolutely fine, you just removed concentration from the other spell instead. And even then, it's sub par because you don't outclass the fighter until turn two, at which point you are 68 damage behind at level 11 on. You also erred in assuming crossbow fighter is the baseline, when that build has range and yours doesn't. A better comparison is Polearm fighter which can take Great Weapon fighting for an extra 4 damage per hit on 4 attacks by level 11, or 5 damage per hit by level 13. But even still using crossbow as the comparison, which is unfair to fighter, you're build takes 11 turns to surpass fighter by level 12, longer than the duration of the spell. (I did 68 divided by 5.7, which was your damage lead). By level 13, with the bigger fey, it takes 6.2 or basically 7 turns to surpass fighter, which is more doable, but even then, damage now beats damage later, so I'd say practically you'd need an 8 or 9 turn fight to really break even in value, 10 turns exactly to be stronger, since by turn 11 your fey is gone and they go back to outpacing you. Our most favorable upper level is 16, when our lead extends to 18.77 and fighter lacks a second action surge. Here, we see that by turn 4 we outpace them, which is actually fair, and by quite a bit. I'd say we are bit above even on value by turn 4, considering the delay, so 5+ turn fights are favorable to us, but this fighter has no subclass features or feats! We had to use our subclass and good feats just to challenge them! Tl;dr, this build shows a ranger who is passably decent, but almost entirely inferior to other martials in dpr. Maybe your utility and healing can close the gap and maybe you are still a valuable teammate, but that's a tough ask against eldritch knights and battlemasters with their bonus d8 to all stealth and initiative and insight and other checks and d10s to any skill they need several times a day, or barbarian's actually good stealth checks now. Utility is present in all classes, although moreso in the ranger than the other martials, so they have something going for them.
I had a panicked moment where you took only 1 expertise at level 9 and had to look up if you only got 1 in the phb It seems you missed an expertise, or I have hearing problems
To me, the 5.24 ranger is very similar to the 4E ranger. A mechanically really strong class (in that system, it was one of the best Strikers) but that has the flavour of a wet piece of cardboard. Sure, the abilities have cool, ranger-y names, but that's about as far as the taste of it goes. Overall, it is the exact opposite of 5E's ranger. In 5E, a ranger had a lot of flavour but almost no good mechanics until they released the xanathar subclasses. Now, the ranger has a lot of damage and versatility, but loses so much flavour, and that's kinda sad.
I think the power level of the new ranger is good enough, but the overall design is just very annoying with the big emphasis on Hunters Mark, that goes against so many of the other things you want to do. If you want to use it you have to concentrate on it and it also uses up your bonus action many of your turns, so many rangers will end up not using Hunters Mark and it will just feel like a slap in the face every time you get an ability that improves Hunters Mark. If they wanted to make Hunters Mark a core feature of the Ranger the Relentless Hunter ability should have been that Hunters Mark don't require concentration and there could have been another ability that allowed you to change the target of Hunters Mark as part of the attack. Another idea could be alternative abilities you could choose instead of the Hunters Mark abilities for the Rangers that don't use Hunters Mark anyway.
To me, I think it's pretty strong, but I just find it wildly boring and with some low expression. It's not flavorful and its core mechanic could really use spice and identity.
I fundamentally disagree on your point against hunter’s mark not being concentration, specifically on that valor bard, because on said valor bard, it is absolutely a waste of levels and a bonus action. 1d6 damage per hit is at best a drop in the bucket in comparison to conjure minor elementals. Relative to other classes, particularly casters, hunters mark losing concentration (maybe at 13th level) is inoffensive at worst and reasonable otherwise. Your precast of summon fey does take turns worth noting, since the duration is very short. Take for example, animal shapes granting 90+ thp to everything within 30 feet of you as many times as you have actions throughout the day at 15th level. Conjure minor elementals lasting 10+ minutes and adding 6d8 damage per hit at that level, etc. Hell, even just polymorph can grant over a hundred thp at level 7, that you don’t even have to keep concentration on to maintain. That’s vastly more powerful than a later level removal of hunters mark’s concentration as a feature. This isn’t to say I disagree that ranger can be decent, but rather to say it isn’t keeping up with those truely *good* classes, if that makes sense.
Hey, nice build 👍🏻 A quick question tho: You said something about Valor bard with a lot of attacks, I couldn't find a video or smt of it. Is there someplace I can find a write up or video? Or is it just a thought that came from combining Valor with warlock, two weapon fighting and possibly fighter for action surge and weapon mastery?
The basic concept is that you get a Valour Bard up to level 10, grab Conjure Minor Elementals, then multiclass Warlock 1. Grab Nick somehow as well if you want. Multiclassing Paladin or Fighter are probably the best options. Conjure Minor Elementals is a 4th level spell that gives you +2d8 damage on every attack against an enemy within 15 feet. It's kind of like Spirit Shroud. The issue is that for every level you upcast it, you add another 2d8. Cast that at 6th level and suddenly you're doing +6d8 on every hit. The Valour Bard also gets something similar to the Bladesinger's Extra Attack, so you can swap out one of your attacks for 3+ Eldritch Blasts, each of which also gets the Conjure Minor Elementals boost. You can get 7 attacks easily, 8 with a bit of optimisation, and the most I've seen was 13 attacks, each one getting +12d8. Treantmonk should have a video coming out about this build at some point, don't think it's up yet though. He was getting something like 250 DPR though. It's insane.
@@the_twig131 yeah that's about what I had in mind too It seems like you have access to the new PHB already, if you do could you clear up for me whether action surge would allow for a second nick attack as part of the second action? I can't seem to find the exact wording of nick and action surge no matter where I look so I can't confirm for myself yet
And what optimization for 8 attacks? I see 7 with nick and dual wilder bonus action attack + 4 eb and 1 normal attack, as well as 5 extra attacks using action surge should Nick not work with it, but how the extra attack? Reaction with smt like sentinel? Or smt obvious I'm missing?
The Light weapon attack is once per turn, so Action Surge does not give you another Nick attack. As for 8 attacks, there's a couple of ways to do it, but the easiest is by getting a weapon with the Cleave mastery.
The Ranger was never meant to be a DPS class yes in 2014 they can do good damage but that was not The main function of the class. And you could say because of how the original martial classes were, it had to pick up the slack, but now that's not the case. Also I'm always a fan of someone doing a video defending a class, but I don't like it when they use multiclassing if you're going to defend a class, defend it as a pure build no class should have to rely on multi classing to be validated for.
To be fair, given the lackluster capstone, it is unlikely anyone will ever go all 20 levels into Ranger. There are just too many single-level dips that outclass it. For example, Paladin gives you more Weapon Mastery, more spell access like Divine Favor (to get that d4 damage you lose; concentration not required) and Lay on Hands.
Actually, Ranger was always a DPS class until 5e just like fighter. In 4e it was specifically a DPS class introducing the super lame Hunter's Mark from MMOs. In 5e it's just a weaker class than every other option even with the Tasha improvements which are good after all. It's a crap fighter crap rogue crap barbarian master of nothing. At least Bards get secrets and a lot of support function. The Paladin was never intended to be a DPS class, but MMOs happened and here we are.
First of all, let's make one thing clear, this isn't 1-20 ranger build. The fact that you need to multiclass already said a lot about their certain higher level feature. Also, the lack of SCALING of their feature is what make them so bad! You can multiclass a few level to a monk and get a mediocre improvement, while dipping a few into a ranger already give you A LOT. This class is like a dipping sauce than the complete dish itself. Level 20 feature is a joke, and even worse than their 2014 feature. Also, this feels more like a Hunter's mark class, not Ranger.
Hunters Mark sucks up so much power budget it robs the imagination from exploring new game design. Rangers don’t get their own versions of brutal strikes or cunning strikes, and these new features try to pass off HM as a class feature without just making it one. Why not play with new reactions that no other class has, and debuffs like removing resistance, adding vulnerability for one turn to your weapon attacks, or buffs to initiative or creating their own cover? There are more ways to imagine a single-target specialist than HM. For exploration, bake in the old Outlander bg, make Hunters Lore a base class feature, heck, give them advantage on skill checks in any wilderness. Rangers should be adaptive, versatile improvisers, making something out of nothing and surviving. They balance on the edge between nature and civilization. That is way more identity than anything they get in the new PHB. These changes feel like a lack of creativity resulting from the same panic of starting your project the night before it’s due. It makes you wonder if they even understood the assignment.
Haven't been keeping up too much with the new edition, so I didn't know that... they didn't change thename of Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style. I mean... seriously!?
As I sat and read through the 2024 PHB, I came to a realization. Ranger, is the druid version of Bard, but terribly implemented. All of the "Hunters" abilities shouldn't be a subclass. They should be "invocations".
The ranger isn't exactly a bad class. But, I just don't like that they choose to focus on Hunter's Mark. Its a bad spell, I with that they got better core features. Sure, you could always do what you do in 2014 that being to ignore bad features and only focus on the good. I just hoping for the core of ranger to be brought up, not down..
16:54 I'll only really critique this point, and the larger one about Hunter's Mark, because otherwise your video has done a great job explaining how the Ranger is a good class in 2024. "It hasn't lost it's identity" I believe is patently false. The loss of Favored Foe/Terrain and Primeval Awareness are massive hits to Rangers previous identity as the master of exploration and hunting (or what I'll glibly refer to as mechanized specism). Skills and some minor mobility bonuses pale in comparison to practically eliminating the Exploration Pillar entirely. I actually believe that design was BAD for the game due to how little support even existed for Exploration to begin with, but it was a core element of the Ranger fantasy going into 5e that is now all but lost. They sacrificed Rangers massive explorative identity in favor of a dramatic improvement to their combat abilities and some more generic utility features. That isn't BAD, but it is a significant departure from prior, and IMO ignores how other Half-Casters can have core defining features that don't just feel like Ribbons, like what Paladin and Artificer have. If Ranger had powerful and useful abilities on par with Aura of Protection, Find Steed, Divine/Improved Divine Smite, and Channel Divinities, I think Ranger could much more effectively occupy a real niche beyond "Fighter with some naturey stuff and spells". To the ultimate point about Hunter's Mark, it is strong, don't get me wrong, especially given how many more attacks a Ranger can conceivably dish out. But as I pointed out above with the sacrifice of identity in favor of combat proficiency, Hunter's Mark dominates a vast portion of the Ranger's power budget and mechanical framework, without amounting to much more than a DPR boost. I'll admit I love how the Hunter subclass can learn details about a Marked foe, and I think had they leaned dramatically further into thay design rather than the other HM features most people would be significantly more happy with the final product. Ultimately HM is almost exclusively a DPR boost, which primarily came at the cost of it's Explorative and Hunter fantasies, which I find really disapponting. Great video overall, though!
So I am going to rebut this, because I think that the improvements to spellcasting do exactly the what you would want out of Favoured Terrain. The ability to swap out spells means that you can have the spells that you need for the day ahead. In the video I gave the examples of Water Breating for boat sessions and Daylight for storming the Vampire's lair, but you also have things like Locate Animals or Plants for a more hunty session or a fetch quest, Beast Sense for scouting from further away than the Wizard's familiar can, Nondetection to prevent scrying, at high levels Commune with Nature can tell you a whole bunch, Pass Without Trace and Rope Trick can help stealth operations, Darkvision means that your human friend won't need a torch when you go down into the haunted mine, and more stuff too. Rather than choosing that you're going to be really good on the coast at level 1, you now plan for the day ahead.
@@the_twig131I don't disagree that spells, basically what Rangers inherit from their Druid Lineage, can absolutely cover a variety of explorative and utility elements. But, and perhaps this might just be more of a preference than literal mechanical issue, I'd rather a Rangers niche come from their class features rather than their spells, similar to how Artificers and Paladins support their niche through their class features, with spells simply providing additional background feature support. CAN a 2024 Ranger "Range" more and more reliably than a 2014 Ranger? I think I'd agree with you that the answer is yes, but I primarily take issue with the WAY this occurs, and specifically that relationship with the Ranger identity of master survivalist and explorer in their core chassis. I admittedly may just be too picky here, but I'd prefer spells to supplement the Ranger's strong class fantasy, not functionally BE the class fantasy.
@@TyphosTheD What class features do paladins get that supports their non-combat niches? Their noncasting class features are "turn a spell slots into a pittance of DPR" "give some healing," "give everyone a save buff and fear immunity" and "give myself an especially resilient horse." Only the horse and the bonus to saves vs traps or hazards could even be considered out of combat. Meanwhile rangers get hours upon hours a day of advantage on tracking a target before it eats into their spell slots, an additional skill and expertise in a skill of their choice followed by even more expertises (say sneaking, or tracking, or wilderness knowledge), Climb/swim speed with +10 to all speeds, exhaustion nigh-immunity (main cause is environmental factors), temporary greater invisibility, and 30ft blindsight. If you need to hunt something or navigate a wilderness, they're your guy. The only thing that really bugs me is losing the immunity to difficult terrain. That should have been broadened from 'just nonmagical plants' to any and all natural terrain.
@@dragonboyjghMaybe I misspoke, I don't believe I did, but I didn't say Paladins core chassis comprises non-combat features. Their Aura, Smites, Divine Sense, Divine Health, Steed, and Channel Divinity comprise a very strong identity for Paladin. In any case, to your question, Find Steed, Divine Sense, Divine Health, Lay on Hands curing conditions, and various Channel Divinity effects all contribute to non-combat abilities. As I said at the start and in the middle, Ranger can absolutely still "Range", and with their greater spell access can likely do so better than before, but the loss of features like Favored Terrain/Foe and Primeval Awareness are huge hits to very potent class identity which are both only partially recovered with the revision or else replaced with very generic skill usage. It appears obvious to me that WotC leaned into spells being a more important factor to their identity than before, and to me that's disappointing.
I’m so happy you made this video! My friends have been saying the 2024 ranger is just the 2017 ranger (Tasha’s options) with flavor replaced with abilities that focus on hunters mark. All the other rule and spell changes have improved the class by a lot and I appreciate you showing this to be the case
Nick is the real star of the show finally allowing us to live out our dual wielding dream. love the build! if I ever roll crazy stats i'm going dual scimitar beast master >:) (maxing out dex and wis)
As a ranger lover throughout the editions, I'm happy with the extra spells and the expanded spell list! Most of their spells can be easily RP's as using herbalist stuff as well, or just as being awesome.
So your argument is that the Ranger isn't complete garbage so we should be thankful?? Kobold pointed out conjure woodland beings isn't that good since your aren't necessarily going to have the wisdom score to cause a failed save. Also, looked like you completely focused on melee damage and didn't share the drop in ranged dps now that you aren't benefiting from increased sharp shooter damage. You could easily run a Fighter and do better at all of those things except cast spells which you could make up for by buying some potions or having your caster make up the difference. Very importantly, the design itself of the Ranger class limits what feats and options you can successfully lean into. You yourself pointed out we don't even want the new Dual Weapon feat. Rather than fixing things Wizards has designed new mechanical traps that will frustrate players. Who is supposed to be dual wielding anyway? Not the monk, not the ranger, not the fighter... Action Economy traffic jam, feats traffic jam, and multiple attribute demand (mad) without the features to support it make the Ranger a big turn off. Wizards could have given Rangers scaling on Hunters Mark with level 1 d6, level 2 d8, level 3 d10 up to d12. All primary class features past level 6 are bad or lacking in literary roots and the 2024 Ranger is clearly weaker than Tasha's Ranger despite some minor improvements. As pointed out, the Hunter subclass features could have easily filled these slots and given the class a lot more personality. Every other class gets fly. Rangers lose move through difficult terrain without penalty... You pointed out that Hunter's Mark without concentration as a spell is problematic... Nobody asked for Hunter's Mark to be a spell. This is not a valid design defense for Wizards who is designing the game and could fix this with ease. Other lost Tasha's features: Rangers have to wait until level 14 to vanish. Rangers have to use a bonus action to cast Favored Foe (Hunter's Mark). Biggest problem with the 5e Ranger is that Hunter's Mark is an MMO concept not a literary trope. Rangers are originally from J R R Tolkien's work. Paladin's are from Elizabeth Moon's work. When you lose sight of the base concept it suffers. Hunter's Mark never should have made it into class features. I can live with what we have, but let's not pretend it's bringing heat. D4 just made a Bladelock that does 50% more damage and has more spell and ability utility. Subclasses: Doom Stalker is cool, but I would rather Assassin. Fae Wander is cool but I would rather Shadow Dancer. Hunter is basic, but Champion is more basic and more useful and again more based. What are we showing up in Ranger class for that we can't get somewhere else? Where is the identity of the class? My perceived solutions (many shared ideas from 2014): A. Most of us would (multiple youtubers) totally go for the Hunter subclass replacing all hunter's mark abilities. B. Rewrite Hunter Mark as a higher level spell that supports the whole party instead of some lame wannabe sneak attack. C. Move Vanish back to level 10. D. Remove bonus action requirements from the Beast and Dragonwarden Dragon. It's not fun, and it's not reasonable for spells to outperform an entire subclass feature. Will people chatter about it and rave about it? Yeah. That's what you want. It's not going to break anything. Beast damage potential is already intentional mediocre as is the to-hit chance without magical item support. E. Explicitly add the two weapon fighting style feature to the dual weapon feat. Stop gating Rangers in general in areas it's not benefiting the game. The Pole-arm feat should NOT be out performing the Dual Weapon feat in bonus damage. Some of these things are common sense when taken in context, but whomever is designing is knee jerk nerfing rather than reading the damage output.
New ranger isn't bad, it just feels bad to play. There is nothing to push you towards being a roaming Hunter. They have a couple abilities, and a few spells, but the abilities are too few and two sparce. Not to mention that by moving the rest of the classes flavor to spells they make them feel less connected to our character. Objective wise, it's good, but I feel like it soul was sacrificed for that. Yes it was always a bit confused but they focused in on the most generic part of its core fantasy to pursue.
As a Ranger Lover but Paladin Main and overall Perma-DM, Hunter's Mark (HM), much like Divine Smite, shouldn't be used in any and all circumstances. If anything, you should be casting it outside of combat for its main purpose: tracking a singular enemy, may it be part of a group or not. Once combat starts, the only reason to be changing HM target every turn is if you are killing an enemy every turn, and if you are doing so, you should just be casting AoEs like Hail of Thorns to mow them down and let your summon/animal companion/horde breaker clean up any remaining mooks this or next turn while you focus on your next Big Enemy. HM as a damage source is better spent on Big Tough Enemies that you can singularly focus on at the beginning of combat and not worry about having to change targets each round. Otherwise, you WILL run into that action economy problem bc CASTING HM ON MOOKS IS NOT EFFICIENT. The extra damage is not worth it when they have low HP. Cast another spell. Entangle them so that your allies can blast them, use your own AoE, do anything BUT casting HM. You have the free uses of it so that you can expend your slots on the big spells when it matters and HM is worthless (which, at higher levels, when you gotta throw big groups of enemies at your players, is almost all the time). Especially as a Beastmaster, SAVE YOUR HM FOR THE BIG ENEMY. Against mooks, command your Land Companion as a BA to deal damage (You kinda want High Wis for this, sure, but it's a good investment) and knock it prone if possible, then you have advantage on your TWF attacks with a Shortsword and a Scimitar for that Nick Attack. It's better than 2d6 of damage. If you have low WIS, you can even give your companion advantage by Attacking you first, casting Ensnaring Strike as a BA on a hit, then commanding your Companion by expending the TWF Attack from Nick. Or simply casting an AoE spell and using your BA to Command your Companion to go to town on the stragglers. Ranged Rangers have the benefit of not having to worry TOO MUCH about being targeted if they play their cards nicely, so while damage output is a bit lower (unless crossbow expert shenanigans), you still have the added bonus of greater survivability and accuracy (Archer style), allowing them to invest more on Wis for subclass features or Con for added durability. It is always a choice and you can't have it all at the same time, good melee and good ranged, good crowd control and good single target damage. So, Rangers: KNOW YOUR OPTIONS, AND CHOOSE WISELY. Single Big Enemy? HM away. Big crowd of Mooks? Mow 'em down with spells and/or other class features. Mix of both? Pick one and communicate with your other party members about what to do. Trying to track a creature to its lair? HM it. Big lair with unknown variables? Pass without Trace and Stealth to survey the area, Speak with Animals on whatever animal life lurks around, or even just cast Enhance Ability (WIS) on yourself or the rogue for exploring ahead and finding traps. Anything else? Improvise. HM is just one tool, very important to the class, yes, but not always the best option, and you can do many different things.
Yes, that is all so incredibly true. Hunter's Mark has a time and a place, but it is not every fight. It does however absolutely have that time and place. In this particular video I was deliberately trying to stay simple, so I didn't go into this that much. Also, now that you have so many free uses of HM, it is often fine to just throw it up whenever you have a spare BA. It's not eating into your spell slots or anything.
Having your bonus action and concentration locked is a huge issue. That their martial attack is STRICTLY AND OBJECTIVELY worse than a fighter further deepends the rift inbetween rangers and the better choices. I dont understand why the argument isnt simple like this: they are worse at attacking with their actions and they are worse at using spells and cannot use concentration without throwing away half of their kit. They are foeced to use their first and some other subsequent bonus actions to reapply hunters mark. The argument isnt that they cannot be flexible or be a jack of some trades and master at none. The argument isnt that they cannot be useful in a party. The argument is that the ranger is even less dynamic in combat and is still bad in combat compared to other martial characters. If a magical weapon drops, giving it to the ranger over the fighter who will hit 2-4 times more the first turn is just a joke. In this example extra extra attack, action surge and two light weapon swings instead of hunters mark turn 1. And some nice maneuvers. The argument is not that you cannot have fun at the table. You could play the old monk without rolled stats, play old four elements and still havee fun. That does not mean the build is good. It is objectively sub par.
Its good to see ranger won't be dead in the water in real scenarios, but ranger fans will just have to acknowledge that spells help fill the gaps rather than define the class. I assume other subclasses aren't far behind on dpr, with the exception of the non-concentration summons. Also, with epic boons, a single dip instead of the ranger capstone is a reasonable choice without feeling like it's breaking away from ranger-ness.
I've not run the calcs on the other subclasses, but they don't look to be that far down until you get 4th level slots at 13, at which point they could instead be using them on something like Conjure Woodland Beings.
Hunter's mark needs to just not be a spell. Keep it a class feature, as was Favored Foe, make it use spell slots (like old smite) and let it give you a couple of free uses. Making it a spell just kills so much stuff about it, if you're in an antimagic field, you lose it. It can be both counterspelled AND Dispelled, which makes you lose resources, and you STILL have to keep concentration on it
With the new version of counterspell, you don't lose your spell slot if you get countered, so in that scenario you don't lose any resources other than your bonus action. (Open question: if you get countered on a free casting, do you lose the resource? I suspect that the RAI answer is no, but RAW seems to be silent on that.)
Yeah, hunters mark is good when you use nick, but it sucks for any other weapons, or any other build that has any other way to weaponize their bonus action, including the entire beastmaster subclass Sure you can make a good ranger out of hunters mark, with _some_ weapons and some builds it is a good concentration option up to 20, particularly when you duel wield but the problem. The problem ranger has isn't that there isn't a single build that's good, there is you have demonstrated this, but the problem is that the build versatility is just really poor. If you don't make good use of huntersmark you just have less class features that improve your build than you did in 2014, and many of those class features you lost were really flavorful and unique. And a lot of builds don't make good use of huntersmark either. In fact, it's fairly easy to make a build where the act of casting huntersmark instead of casting nothing would lower your DPR instead of raising it, since it's damage per bonus action isn't as high as other ways to weaponize your bonus action that cost less resources. Huntersmark, if it was going to ever be so central to the class should have been designed around being a spell that was useful regardless of the the rest of the rangers build, their preferred concentration option, or their weapon choice, and it should have been designed in a way were dedicated rangers aren't as incentivized to find something in their build to replace it, instead of saying "here's huntersmark. It's a spell useful on some characters but 3 class features were replaced with this so you better build your entire character around it" Smite is a spell that fulfills a similar degree of identity importance as huntersmark but it has none of these build restricting shortfalls. Even if you are a polearm master it's not like you would do less damage in a fight if you decided to smite. I'm not saying huntersmark should just become a smite. But, i am saying that features in the class progression as core as huntersmark should be designed in a way where every ranger would want to use them. Especially if you lose primal awareness and landstride to get these features. Huntersmark just doesn't fulfill the niche it is trying to fit
I disagree that they have bad versatility. Hunter's Mark works best with TWF, but you can also do ranged builds that make more use of their numerous movement restricting features, there's a lot of things that you can do with Spike Growth, and at higher levels there's things that you can do with Conjure Minor Elementals. It is a bit weird for the higher level features to be so Hunter's Mark focussed, but you also have classes like the Warlock which is very Eldritch Blast focussed.
@@the_twig131 Yes you can absolutely make a ranger that straight up doesn't use some of it's class features in favor of using basic martial abilities plus a collection of amazing non huntersmark spells. Ranger loves like myself have been doing that for a while. But that was always the problem that ranger had. If you are worse off for using your class features than not using them, then you will have a class that is bad at face value, that you have to try to make work by being part of communities that pour over spells to find combos of stuff that's good. The result is a class that most people think is bad with select corners of the community defending, and that was the exact problem ranger always had. Tasha helped fixed that problem, entering a time when most people actually thought ranger with Tasha's was pretty good as long as you only use huntersmark if your build is actually improved by it. But where Tasha took two steps forward, 2024 took one step back. Keeping about half of the Tasha's changes, but removing land stride, and Primal Awareness, and replacing TCE favored foe with one based on huntersmark, whose intense action economy cost means that only builds whose main action attack quantity significantly outperforms their ability to weaponize their bonus action with anything else can make effective use of this feature, while every other ranger is worse off than they were before and the perception of ranger is going to remain negative. The problem with ranger was always the huge perception problem created by having class features that most rangers are better off not using than using. And WOTC had majorly fixed that problem in Tasha's then undid the fix to that problem for 2024. Even if you can still make a good build out of ranger that uses hunters mark, or that doesn't use huntersmark, it's perfectly reasonable to not be happy about this huge miss in design that is huntersmark trying to fulfill a class central spell while not having any of the qualities of a spell that would be designed for that niche.
@@the_twig131 I also want to add, the huntersmark vs warlock thing is a huge false equivalency for several reasons. The biggest of which being that people did in fact not like that warlock was too eldritch blast focused and WOTC changed warlock to better support builds that don't use eldritch blast. So if anything, it kinda proves the point that basing an entire class around one spell isn't as interesting as allowing you to build the class around any spell, and having those 'core spells' just being kinda good spells you can take or not take Personally I am of the opinion that it's perfectly fine and reasonable for specific spells to be incredibly important to almost every build of an entire class. But those spells should have characteristics that makes that kind of niche a good design space. Most importantly the spell should actually be good regardless of every other reasonable decision a player might make for their build as primarily a member of that class. No matter what feats, subclass, spells or weapons you use Divine Smite and Eldritch Blast are almost always good spells on their classes. That's just not the case with hunters mark, the huge action economy cost of multiple bonus actions and concentration are simply too build restrictive to be considered good design to be a central class feature. Though, it's arguably not too restrictive to base a subclass around
Watching this video next to Treantmonk's video of doing a TWF Ranger Build... I don't really understand you taking the Monk Dip, it looks like the intention to was to weaponize the Bonus Action, but you decided not to take a Feat for that because you assumed you'd be using your Bonus Action on Hunter's Mark..?? You also don't seem to be accounting for Summon Fey only lasting a Minute to do it without Concentration. So your First round of Combat will only be summoning and then Placing Hunter's Mark. I also wonder if you're applying Dreadful Strikes more than once a round, because each target can only take it once in a round. Treantmonk is also comparing ranger to other 2024 builds rather than 2014 ones. Like a 2024 Monk/Fighter/Paladin, *absolutely* eats the Ranger's lunch in Tier 3 and 4.
The only reason you think this is good is because of the new weapon properties and how they interact with two weapon fighting. The ranger hasn't become better and neither has hunter's mark(which has become nothing more than the lvl 14 hexblade's curse but worse because the hexblade can concentrate on other spells at the same time).
Ranger needs to be torn down, and rebuilt. It should have been structure more like a "natures answer to warlock". Subclasses based either on creature/monster types, or just specific animals for specific bonuses. They should at least have some kind of "blade" spell. Reverberating Blade. "Deal 1d6+wis force damage/5 levels" kinda deal, because rangers were meant to flex on everyone in every edition before this. They should have like, 6 spells. But 1.5 or 2x the spell slots(not level) they currently do, for stuff like a shoving spell, a short 10' or 15' aoe, A scalable area denial spell, a mind influencer like charm person/monster, a scaleable defense spell(temp hp, ac, or save bonus), a detection spell and a movement/stealth spell. They absolutely should either have prof with alchemist tools or herbalism kit, or both. And, all of hunters features should just be rolled into the base ranger and given at the leves the subclass says they can pic. All of them. Level 3? You get colossus slayer, horde breaker, and giant killer. 7th? Same approach. Thats it. That a baseline guide to fixing the least useful class in the last two editions.
it's not weak, its just a bad design, boring, one trick pony, which it's entire purpose is to be the best at exploring. And the exploring pillar does not exist.
The main problem with Ranger isn't the class being mechanically underpowered. It's the class theme, core game rules/pillars, and the way the dev team just used the bad design elements of Tasha's and the stuff that made fighter better to update the ranger. The 2024 ranger is a bad class because it's core class identity now revolves around a level 1 trap spell that you should never cast after getting 2nd level spells, half it's tier 3 and 4 class features revolve around that level 1 trap spell, the game doesn't have functioning rules for the exploration pillar of play, the 2024 ranger doesn't even try to make characters better at the exploration pillar of play, and they abandoned all pretense of the class having the themes it had in older editions to give it more castings of the trap spell. Really, though, the main problem with Hunter's Mark is the old Henry Ford quote. "If I asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse." The devs asked players what ranger needed, and the idiots said,"Moar hunter marks!" Hunter's Mark shouldn't be in the game. It's damage bonus should be baseline favored creature bonus damage and be granted alongside advantage on dex, int, and wis checks related to anything tied to the creature and terrain types the ranger is specialized in, and an overland travel bonus that kicks in when the party is in the ranger's favored terrains. This should be coupled with either giving the ranger more favored creature and terrain picks, or grouping all creature and terrain types into a handful of broad categories that cover everything in the game. I use the colors of mana from Magic the Gathering to fix ranger, and I don't see any reason use this Hunter's Mark class instead of any fighter, barbarian, or druid.
@dragonboyjgh So you either didn't read the whole post or you didn't understand the change I mentioned at the end. For starters, "What if the thing in the thing never happens?" Isn't the slam dunk argument you think it is. What if the monk never gets an arrow fired at them? Is defelect arrows/missiles then a badly designed feature? No. The DM just didn't implement the obvious character choices into the game. Players should pick early specializations based on what the DM tells them when they pitch the campaign to the players. DMs should also throw the players a bone every once in a while by changing the race/hideout location of a major antagonist. Back to the fix I use, the problem isn't specializations. The problem is rangers don't get enough and they don't get them fast enough. I fix this by using broad categories that cover everything instead of individual sub groups. At levels 1, 6, 14, and 20 rangers pick one of the 5 mana colors from Magic the Gathering or colorless. At level 3 they get to pick one out of two colors based on their subclass. On the DM side all creature types, terrain types, classes, backgrounds and factions are tied to one or more colors of mana. On the player side they get their int mod in bonus languages with each color choice, and when dealing with anything tied to their mana colors their weapons deal one more damage die, dex int and wis checks have advantage, travel speed/distance is doubled for the group, and they roll half as often for combat encounters and twice as often for social encounters or discoveries. By level 6 rangers have 3 of the 6 broad categories that cover everything in the game, and if we ever do a level 20 one shot they have 5 out of the 6. At that point it's their deliberate choice if none of their specializations come up.
@@CitanulsPumpkin The likelihood of projectiles never showing up in a given campaign, and the likelihood that arctic terrain and troglodytes never show up in a given campaign or if they do only briefly, are two very different scales, and it's disingenuous to pretend they're the same.
@dragonboyjgh Do I need to sign you up for an adult literacy class? I've said multiple times that the fix for ranger is to replace individual creature and terrain type picks with broad category picks. Specifically the Mana colors from Magic the Gathering. When your specialization pick includes one sixth of the possible stuff to find in the game your ranger will get those bonuses more often than the monk gets to use deflect arrows. Say you want to go with your example of trogoldytes and arctic. Troglodytes are subterranean cave/underdark dwellers known for their toxic stench and barbarism. To pick them you'd pick black mana. That pick would also cover undead, fiends, cultists, most aberrations, rogues, warlocks, some clerics & paladins, bandits, pirates, spies, vultures, bats, rats, most thieves guilds, the Zentarim, species created through global curses, swamps, crypts, graveyards, the underdark, under-cities, badlands, and sewers. MtG is more loose with categorizing the arctic. Tundras are a dual land card that gives white and blue mana. So either pick blue or white at a later level. Blue would also give bonuses for coasts, islands, oceans, underwater, large rivers and lakes, Mangrove forests, geysers and wadis, merfolk, fish, most birds, air and water elemental creatures, wizards, artificers, librarians, scholars, most shapeshifters, and most things with a swim speed. White would also cover plains, farms, small towns, most humans, halflings, Aasimar, Leonin, Loxodons, celestials, Rhox(Rhinofolk), clerics, paladins, monks, birds of prey, griffins, rocs, pagasi, lions, rhinos, and other savanna creatures, soldiers, fighters, guards, lawyers, judges, witch hunters, inquisitors, crusaders, zealots, and peasant mobs. Do you see the difference this system makes, or are you going to keep arguing 2014 RAW by yourself?
@@CitanulsPumpkin You're the one discussing personally made homebrew no one else has ever heard of on a video about 2014/2014 D&D. As for the quality of that homebrew, it just sounds like a mess with a million things to keep track of. Have you ever actually attempted to playtest it or is this just purely white room theorybrew?
I enjoyed the build and hope that some of my players do try out the new Ranger and if they do, undoubtedly they will have a good time. The problem I see with the Ranger is basically what you said @0:15, its power is hidden. It doesn't take a doctorate in DND builds to find that the Ranger is good in combat, Spells in general are good both in and out of combat, and the Ranger has builds to be that hole-filler in just about any party, a factor that it may hold by itself. Every other class has some features that at a glance, is a potential reason to play that class over another. The Ranger's answer to that in this PHB is free Hunter's Mark, and to a point its level 10 feature to remove exhaustion. The latter is undoubtedly useful and the buffs to the Hunter's Mark to apply with non-weapons including its synergy with the "1 spell slot per turn" rule do help the class. However, and I understand this is subjective, these lack the WOW factor of a Sneak Attack, Aura of Protection, Deflect Attacks, etc. Plus that capstone which was skipped here as any 1 level dip is going to be a better move.
I'm going to be honest the_twig, I appreciate posting a simple build, but the people pushing back against the 2024 ranger have pre-emptively dismissed any kind of build by labeling them as not acceptable forms of proof. (I'm not one of the "ranger-bad" types, but I have seen quite a few knee-jerk youtube videos, people just say they don't care about builds) Instead, anyone debating against Rangers being bad is going to have to challenge their core perceived problem with the class: Hunters Mark. They have to be shown how absolutely bonkers it is to consider removing Concentration on Hunters Mark. They have to be reminded that Rangers cast spells now, and have done so for most of the game's history. If they want a "spell-less Ranger experience" just play a Scout Rogue (or wait till it gets updated for the new books) And they have to be reminded that it's ok for Classes heavily favor a single part of their kit (Eldritch Blast and Rage spring to mind).
is it really bonkers to remove cocentration from hunters mark though? Dont get me wrong, it could get out of hand with multiclassing, but i think that if the removal of concentration comes at around level 5 or 6, it should be fine, i mean, paladins get 1d8 extra damage in all their attacks and it doesnt really breaks anything. (english is not my first language, so sorry for any mistakes).
@@bastiancastillo7692especially now that smite isn't restricted to melee sure paladin isn't smiting as often but they pretty much have concentration free hunters mark except hunters mark doesn't get a damage increase until after a typical module has finished
rangers arnt bad any class and build can be good thats not the problem your understanding its that the class itself is lazy and bad after waiting 10 years for this and the audacity to call it a new class when its just tasha and ua stuff we already complained about wotc is just lazy and most of the gameplay comes from spells and sublclass options im gonna copy paste what i said on another video that i think explains it well, "ranger is the worse class in my opinion not only because there generally weak (altho i think any class can be good if you have ideas and can build characters) but there just boring and this is coming from someone who plays alot of rangers and is currently playing a ranger build in a long term campaign and i got a opinion about it i wanna see what people think. i think rangers are bad and boring because they have no signature ability a ability that alters how you play the game and can be built apon by other options and ability's every other class has one barbarian-rage, bard-bardic inspiration, cleric-channel divinity, druid-wild shape, fighter-action surge, monk-martial arts and ki, paladin-smites and auras, rogue-sneak attack, sorcerer-metamagic, warlock-invocations and pactboons, wizard-spellbook ranger doesn't have any unique ability that the class is focused around so it struggles to have appeal or keep up withy the rest of the party doing cool stuff that's why it feels so subclass focused for ability's and playstyles it needs something base to define the class not be based around spamming a spell(hunters mark)"
I agree somewhat. I think what this video shows is that a ranger CAN be good. But the issue is really that Hunters Mark conflicts so much with other spells and bonus actions, especially the Beast Master. Also what this video shows is how Hunters Mark is good with dual wielding. But I imagine a ranger being someone who fights at RANGE, not at melee (even though dual wielding is a prominent ranger fantasy). Hunters Mark is not ideal for fighting at range compared to melee now, which does destroy the ranger fantasy a little. It just needed a couple/few more features that really bring Hunters Mark online earlier, that way players feel incentivised to use it. And maybe free casts of other useful spells too, like pass without trace or speak with animals would have been absolutely incredible to the ranger fantasy.
@@Sambrostar the last part is what the tasha Primal Awareness ability did gave free cast of mid but useful and flavorful spells and they REMOVED the whole ability in the 2024 but yes why im so mad is cause i love rangers and they can be really good and fun with no doubt i just see how there base class can be so much more i pointed out how every other class has a kinda signature ability thats unique to them and can change how you play and also gets enhanced by other stuff which is fun ranger doesn't have any signature ability there tryna make that ability just a spell that most rangers use anyways it doesnt feel like were getting anything imo its just lazy made for something needed the most attention
You hit the nail on the head. The problem with Ranger isn’t a damage problem, it’s that the class is fundamentally not interesting. You can’t help but compare Ranger and Paladin seeing as they’re the only half casters in the PHB (sorry Artificer fans), yet Paladins have unique and iconic abilities like Divine Smite and Aura of Protection that make them MORE than just a Cleric/Fighter multiclass. I don’t see that in Rangers. If anything, a Fighter/Druid multiclass could do much of the same stuff as a Ranger with a few feats. I want something that inspires me to play a Ranger and makes them feel dramatically unique at the table and I hoped that WotC would make that happen and they didn’t.
@@alexmiller1800 ye just sad and shows how lazy wotc is was really looking forward to the new ranger caused imo it needed the most work got really excited when they said "its a whole new class" just to get slapped in the face with tasha and the ua favorite enemy (really just hunters mark) infact they removed primal awareness to was really hoping for something that made ranger ranger but its just whole identity around hunters mark now
My default when people say “the ranger sucks because hunter’s mark” is to say, “You’re looking at the ranger like a new player. WotC gave a bunch of buffs to Hunter’s Mark so the unoptimized player who only wants to cast that one spell-and they are legion-will be slightly more relevant. Just cast other spells.
I honestly don't dislike the 2024 ranger, but their level 20 ability feels kinda insulting compared to others. It's really my only complaint. (Not that people really play level 20)
Yeah, ranger feel like a class that require a 1 level dip somewhere else to make it optimal... probably on monk for martial arts, rogue for sneak attack or fighter for another fighting style.
This is the only criticism I agree with whole heartedly. There were many better options for a capstone
The problem was never that it's weak, it's just that is frustrating to play.
It's like they gave a bunch of spells to barbarian when he can't cast any while raging.
You get two free castings of HM.
Need to focus down a single Big Bad? Awesome, pop HM For Free, and go to town.
Oh, a bunch of minions show up?
Drop HM (who cares, you have another free use and didn't cost you anything), and cast Spike Growth or a different concentration spell that suits the situation.
I think everyone focuses so hard on HM being concentration, forgetting that you get free uses of it, which means it doesn't matter if you drop concentration on it intentionally or unintentionally.
I keep seeing this but other than the summon spells which you basically get concentration free through different subclasses, and like conjure animals and dominate monster which both come online way later. What spells are the Ranger using it's concentration on?
Entangle? In a situation where you don't want to concentrate on hunters mark just drop con and recast it for free later
@@grantgarbour
Here are some spells i know the ranger could cast mid combat:
Level 1:
Fog cloud, ensnaring strike (this os the main one, it can shutdown a group of enemies and it works like divine smite, so it only activates when you have already hit the enemy, so you can be pretty cost effective with this one), zephyr strike and entangle.
Level 2:
Gust of wind, healing spirit, silence, spike growth and summon beast.
Level 3:
Ashadarlon's stride, conjure animals, flame arrows, elemental weapon, protection from energy, summon fey and wind wall.
Level 4:
Conjure woodland beings, dominate beast, grasping vine, guardian of nature, stoneskin and summon elemental.
Level 5:
Wrath of nature.
And on every combat situation i can think off, i can find at least one spell in each level within this list that would be better then hunter's mark.
A couple points:
- The problem is that you are locked into using Hunter's mark and concentrating on it. Other than the Fey Wanderer and Summon Fey, the cost of casting any other concentration spell is incredibly high.
- While TWF is considerably better, this build would do a lot worse at range due to less attacks per turn. Ranged Ranger is also a very common archetype that needs considered.
- How often were you counting on that bonus action attack in your numbers? As you mentioned, your bonus action is needed for applying/moving/recasting hunters mark a lot of the time.
- similarly are you assuming you precast summon fey or spending a full turn to setup casting it? The baseline builds you compare to have no setup required.
You can dual wield hand crossbows, so that build is the same at range
@@DandDgamer hand crossbows don't have Nick, so no it's not
Just a point of my own: Melee needs to do more dmg than ranged to be worth using, due to the increased risks and limitations presented by being a melee class. If melee doesn't do enough additional dmg, it just won't be worth taking all the extra risks, which is a major balance problem in 5e and has been since 2014.
@@TheTdroid The problem with thinking that ranged ranger being weaker is OK because range needs to be weaker, is that, even though that premise is true, ranger takes this much too far. a ranged ranger is not simply merely weaker than a melee ranger, they are weaker than a ranged ranger that simply refuses to use their class features, and therefore, also weaker than a ranged character of a class with more applicable class features. Pact tactics was able to demonstrate that if you can only make 2 attacks in an action and 1 as a bonus action, if it be from handcrossbows or beastmaster, your total valued output will go down if you use your bonus action to mark someone compared to if you just attacked without casting any spells.
In other words, unless you play this build specifically, there's a good chance that the act of using huntersmark lowers your damage instead of raising it.
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar Firstly, a ranged character should do less damage than a melee character for the simple reason that melee characters take on significantly more risks and limitations that ranged ones do not have to deal with.
Things that melee characters deal with:
- Higher risk of dying, often forcing defensive actions like disengaging or dodging
- Having insufficient movement, reducing their ability to do damage
- Having to hang back, because spellcasters are planning on doing things like casting Web.
Melee needing higher damage output than ranged isn't "just because". It's because there are factors that reduce the effective damage output of melee character that ranged characters are at much less risk of experiencing.
If a ranged character deals the same amount of damage as a melee character, there is no reason to play melee because the ranged character will have significantly higher effective damage.
Secondly, to the more implicit point in your post: Rangers and Paladins should not, under any circumstances, be top DPR characters in the game. Classes like Fighters and Rogues *should* do quite a lot more damage than Rangers and Paladins, because those classes have a much more narrow focus and less access to special abilities that Rangers and Paladins have.
The martial vs half-caster thing should be a choice about whether you want to be the best at being a martial, or if you want a wider set of skills.
I think the issue is that multiple class features and even a couple subclass features are tied to a 1st level spell that doesn't even upcast for increased damage. I think the best comparison you can make to explain how silly it sounds, is imagine if warlock had 4 features for Hex. Is it bad? Not really, but it isn't great either since you will likely have other concentration spells you want to cast.
Ironically it would be super cool if Warlock had multiple Invocations that enhance Hex with new functionalities (probably including being able to cast it without Concentration), allowing players to focus on that playstyle.
Warlock did have multiple enhancements to Hex in invocations.
@@amudeus9942 they also had enhancements for like 5 or 6 other playstyles so ranger only having the one is kinda cringe.
@@danielbarnes1241 exactly
Invocations are a choice, not a fixed class feature for every warlock @@amudeus9942
Here's a breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of the 2024 Ranger compared to 2014/Tashas. First the positives:
+Vastly improved spellcasting feature (available at 1, more spells known, capable of switching 1 spell on a long rest, druidic focuses ported from Tasha's Ranger)
+Upgraded Fighting Style feature
+Favored Enemy/HM deals more damage than Favored Foe
+Weapon Mastery
+Roving is now 10 feet extra movement as opposed to 5
+Expertise at 9
+Relentless Hunter at 13
+Nature's Veil now lasts until the end of your next turn
+Precise Hunter at 17
+Reworked Feral Senses
Now the minuses:
-Favored Enemy/HM is clunkier than Favored Foe
-No Primal/Primeval Awareness
-Roving now requires you don't wear heavy armor
-no Land's Stride
-Tireless now runs off Wisdom instead of PB (this is explicitly a nerf for Rangers as they're MAD)
-Nature's Veil pushed all the way back to 14 AND also based off Wisdom
-no Vanish
-new Foe Slayer is terrible
Overall the 2024 Ranger is stronger and more streamlined in some areas while being clunkier and outright weaker than Tasha's in a few others. It also lacks flavor features tying it to it's role as a guardian of nature, which is awkward when Druids get to reinforce their ties to nature with Wild Companion and Primal Order. Feels more like a sidegrade of Tasha's rather than a purely updated class.
It's also important to point out this doesn't include spells. A good number of Ranger spells have been reworked, makng them more useful, however the biggest changes are to the reworked Conjure spells and whether the reworks are better or not is subject to opinion. Rangers also don't get Minor Elementals (the strongest one).
Other Negatives: Conjure Animals is worthless. Relies on a trap spell. Overall, in actuality, the power floor was raised, and the power celling came crashing down
Here is a reality that I have seen basically every single DnD TH-camr ignore; the argument seems to always be "yes there are weak levels, but you can just ignore the bad features and use the good ones. Good features eventually come".
Most DnD games last for months and never make it past level 10. Whenever you're told to "wait a couple levels for the good features", you need to remember you're asking someone to play a class that is not fun for potentially MONTHS in the hopes of getting to something that is fun. Why not... just play a fun class?
The Ranger is not super weak - it's boring. The issue isn't the numbers it's the fact that they feel like they get so few interesting, fun, or unique features. Additionally, the design pushes you basically in a single direction. If you don't want to be a Ranger focusing on Hunter's Mark, you're giving up FOUR class features. Even if you do, the BA conflict is not resolved. A Beastmaster Ranger cannot set up Hunter's Mark and get their companion to attack in the same turn.multiclassing is also hell because so many good features "Flurry of Blows, Divine Smite, Steady Aim, etc) also use a BA.
You can absolutely make a mechanically fun Ranger. It doesn't change the fact the class is just Fighter 2 with less interesting features and theming. A Rogue is weaker but has way stronger flavour and is way more distinct and fun to play.
The biggest reason for this is that Ranger has always been meant for the exploration pillar of the game, specifically wilderness exploration, and WotC have severely neglected exploration mechanics. The rangers have no wilderness to range.
@@DabroodThompson xactly. Many "Ranger"-y hings are just not supported by 5e: trap making, hunting, xploration, animal taming, etc.
In my opinion it’s not a bad class it’s a feel bad class. It feels bad because you can’t use all of your abilities to their fullest. If you want to use your spell casting to the best of its abilities you have to ignore the features that buff hunters mark. If you want to use hunters mark to the fullest it limits your spell casting choices, even some of the subclass features clash with hunters mark.
This is an opinion I can certainly respect. You can't use everything together, and it would be nicer if you could. I do think though that both Hunter's Mark and other concentration spells have places that you would want to use them. Hunter's Mark is normally better against individual big enemies, something like Conjure Animals is better against lots of smaller ones.
@@the_twig131 I agree but then it leaves me to feel what I as the opportunity cost of focusing so much on hunters mark when you could have given features that could have benefited more than a level 1 spell. What if the features they did give gave buffs to other things, like the feature that lets hm become unbreakable gave advantage to concentration save on other spells. So it’s still strongest with hm but not completely unused if you use another spell. Also when subclass also use the bonus action such as a he beast master needs to transfer hunters mark but also command their beast. Why not include a feature even at higher levels where you could do both? I mean i do think people are blowing things out of proportion but I do see where they are comes from and think the ranger could have used one more draft just to smooth out these rough edges
The free castings of HM is what makes it completely fine with other Concentration spells.
Use HM when you need to focus down a target. If you need to drop concentration or you unintentionally drop concentration, it doesn't matter. It didn't cost you anything in the first place.
@@chrisg8989 but it does cost you your bonus action and your concentration
@@jakeryker3751 so do other spells. But they also cost a spell slot. Just use HM when it makes sense. It's the same thing as Paladin Smite. Except you actually have to think strategically when deciding when to use it.
How does this compare to an Eldritch Knight Fighter who picks up Hunter's Mark with the Feytouched feat?
Poorly, but literally every martial not using Conjure Minor Elementals compares poorly. You have basically picked Van Gough and asked how my mate Jimmy the professional artist compares.
I think we all can agree that CME's scaling is a mistake. Some tables will likely either ban it or houserule it to scale like Spirit Shroud
@@Rexir2 ya we start our 1st 2024 game this month and this has already been house ruled even though we were supposed to be doing everything RAW for the 1st time in like 8 years since its a "new" system.
Quick note about your suggestions for feats at lvl 13.
Grappler says that the punch and grab attack must be made with the attack action so you wouldnt get to do it with your BA. Also you need a free hand to grapple an enemy which is possible with weapon swapping but I dont think that was your intention.
Yeah, I spotted the BA when I was transcribing everything. That's kind of unfortunate, and it does change my opinion to probably favouring Skulker.
@the_twig131 you could replace a sword attack with an unarmed strike to utilize it. And with weapon juggling, you can technically twf with 1 hand. It's still an option technically
That unarmed attack is better if you use it for shoving instead of grappling
You could also choose piercer or slasher if you want to be boring, or speedy if you want to be fast, or skill expert for no particular reason
SHADOW TOUCHED
Pick up wrathful smite for beguiling twist combo
Because of how Great Weapon Master is worded, you can apply it to a longbow. So, I have a Turok-inspired Ranger Archer I'm eager to try that adds his prof bonus to his archery damage. I'm planning on making him a Hunter subclass.
This sounds like a really cool build :)
Fuck yeah Turok!
Only problem is you need a 13 strength making the Rangers even more MAD. It's great for fighters now they can be really good in melee and range combat.
Fighter does this better already.
Ah, it doesn't take much to incite the naysayers. "Fighter does this better already," and the like.
Admittedly, the 'Turok' concept does rely on letting the Wisdom score suffer a bit (14) to get the Strength to the pre-requisite 13 to take the Great Weapon Master feat. It just means that the flavor of magic gets dedicated to non-saving throw utility spells. No ensnaring strikes, more detect magic and the like.
Talking with friends, it seems to be the identity part that bothers people rather than the pure mechanics. Ranger feels even more watered down than 2017. They gave them damage-focused features that aren't unique to them, which also demand action economy and concentration, thus narrowing your mechanical choices if you want to make use of their features. I don't understand why they wouldn't dial in on the "half caster with a pet" feature of rangers, and make Beast Master basically a core part of the class. Or if they're dead set on hunter's mark, why not add features like Beast Master's level 11 Bestial Fury being able to move hunter's mark to the target of their attack when you command them with your bonus action?
I don't think the 2024 ranger is bad. But what I wonder is what right now makes me want a level 11 ranger instead of a multiclass level 5 fighter, level 6 druid? Are those differences evocative and compelling from a flavor and mechanical perspective? How does that change as you progress beyond 11th level?
From what i've seen the new melee seems to be significantly improved while new ranged isnt much better than old ranged(maybe even worse at some points). Which sounds like a good thing melee should deal much better damage than ranged but this also means optimized martials will be much more vulnearable now. I start to understand what pack tactics meant when he said the floor has been raised, not the ceiling.
Yes, absolutely. Melee damage is much better now, and also just generally has a lot more things that you can do because of Masteries. Range does probably do less damage than in 2014.
Personally, I think that that's just an all around good thing.
I don't think the ranger is mechanically bad. I am just sad to see some of their more flavorful abilities abandoned instead of re explored
My argument wouldn't be that the new Ranger is weak, it's just poorly designed.
Making a class lose 4 features to use another feature (spellcasting) is just not very good design. I believe making Hunters mark concentration free would have just made the problem worse, not better.
The Ranger needs a way to cast spells while also keeping the ability to use, what WotC has decided is, a core feature of the class.
A potential fix could have been a feature like "If casting a spell that requires concentration caused you to lose concentration on hunters mark, you may cast hunters mark without expending a spell slot." Sure it would only give you a first level mark, but it wouldn't make you feel as punished for using another concentration spell.
In conclusion, the new Ranger may be powerful, but that doesn't mean that the class isn't poorly designed.
Rangers shouldn't be casting spells.
Martial classes should be martial classes, not mediocre violent magicians
@@elijahherstal776 I can see going that direction as well, but in that case what could your full martial Ranger do that would make him stand out from the Fighter, Rogue, or Barbarian. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept, but if I was going to, for example, build a Rangers Apprentice type Ranger in Dnd it would be a Rogue/Monk multiclass.
@@chiepah2 that's the problem- D&D's writers suck at making Martial Classes.
Potential Solution: Remove Ranger and Rogue entirely, merge them together and drop the stump-humper magic nonsense, focus on ambush/stealth/sneak attacks (ranged and melee), etc.- call it a 'Strider'.
@@elijahherstal776 I agree, the rogue can just handle the ranger class, you can't get rid of rogue, it's too iconic, but you could make martial ranger subclasses part of rogue and make magical ranger subclasses part of druid, except gloomstalker, that one is a perfect fit for rogue.
@@chiepah2 you most certainly can get rid of it, because it only exists because people don't do dungeons anymore. "Thief" used to have a purpose, "Rogue" was created to fill a gap that didn't need to be filled.
Rogues are garbage as they are, Rangers are only garbage because the writers are midwits.
And 'refusing to let go' is part of the reason D&D is in such sad shape as it is. But, it's great for drawing in midwit tourists.
I think you've missed why people are calling ranger bad. It's because the class is kinda boring still. If you don't cast hunter's mark, you just don't have certain features, and that sucks if you want to do literally anything else with your concentration. People can see how it's strong mechanically, but having an entire class being based around one spell is bad design whether that spell is good or not.
You have to try approaching hunter’s mark differently in this case. Don’t think of it as your big option if you really want to use a huge concentration spell, think of it as the go to expendable option you pick in every other situation.
Because you get a really good amount of free usages of hunter’s mark and it can last for an hour, you can be very liberal in when and how you apply them. The hour duration means you can easily keep one cast of hunter’s mark up between multiple fights, with the many free uses allowing you to freely deactivate and reactivate it as needed.
If a situation arises where another concentration spell is needed, it’s really easy to drop hunter’s mark then turn it on again after this other concentration spell isn’t needed or is lost. Intermixing and alternating these spells is going to be ranger’s MO, and with the free uses and duration it’s a balancing act that I believe can be used favorably.
All this said though I think something to unlock hunter’s marks concentration would have been a really cool 20th level ability and miles better than the 2024 capstone foe slayer. If any 2024 Ranger I play ever reaches level 20, it will definitely multiclass at least 1 level into something else.
People are absolutely saying that the ranger is bad. Like a lot of people are claiming it's mechanically weak.
I chatted with 2 separate people who both claimed that the rogue out damaged the ranger by level 7 and that the gap only got bigger from there. That's an extreme case but they are far from the only people who say the ranger needs a buff, in fact most of the homebrew "fixes" I've seen for the ranger have focused on buffing the class.
Yeah, a lot of people are saying that it's bad because it's weak, primarily because it's been somewhat stuck in the public conscience that Hunter's Mark is a bad spell, which it isn't. As @chaserandalow8548 said, you have so many free uses that you can just put it up, then drop it fairly freely. It's not your locked in spell for the entire fight.
In fact, because it doesn't use a spell slot, a Hunter might cast HM just to use Hunter's Lore to find out any vulnerabilities or resistances, and then cast their actual concentration spell with their action. Then, later in the fight when their Spike Growth or whatever isn't useful any more, just throw Hunter's Mark back up to finish off the last little bit.
This
@@the_twig131 Your not wrong with you opinion and how it works but you also have to think about the other end of things. What if we simply don’t want to use that spell? Not because it’s a bad spell. It’s decent but not something I’d want to base a whole class on. If you don’t like the spell and don’t wanna use it, you’re simply fucked. You don’t get any class features then. You can multi class sure, but what about those who want to be a full ranger? They just fucked then? And the fact the hunters mark is a bonus action makes it infinitely worse, there’s so many things I’d rather be doing. Like if I was a beast master, I have to use my bonus action to tell it what to do. That alone interferes with HM. It’s just very limiting and boring is the problem. Why would I want to be a ranger using the same spell over and over and over again throughout the whole game? It doesn’t have the same power or impact as smite or fireball. Ya know?
I have a hard time choosing scimitar for weapon mastery when the dagger is available and can be thrown, it’s like 1 point of avg damage but the ability to increase reach by 20/60 feet seems like a fair trade
Ooohhhhhh that’s why, very cool
Monk dips are going to be the new Hex dips, but for Dex characters instead of Cha.
I don't think that they necessarily will, just because unless you're not wearing armour, you get no benefit. Your BA Unarmed Strikes and DEX based Monk Weapons turn off as soon as you so much as pick up a shield, and that can result in a huge reduction in AC, unless you also have high WIS and aren't considering magic items.
@@the_twig131 Fair, but I think the bonus action unarmed strike is really good, as a high Dex char your Wis is probably a +2 since you want to make your perception checks, so light armor and shield would only net +1 in most cases. Unless magic items, which should be easier to get a hold of now too. However, I think a 2 level dip is still going to be really attractive to any Dex char except rogue who would go further than that for more damage options. It feels weird to say go more monk for more damage options.
@@the_twig131 I like using a Shield with my ranger! It's a solid Legend of Zelda's Link stereo type we hardly see at the table.
i feel like the issues i see in ranger as a class will be, if HM was a buff to accuracy(ie a psudo bless, 1BA, 1 target, 1d4 to hit on target foe, no concentration, remove on recast) and just make it not a spell, then make subclass features far enough down the line you cant to 3 level dips to get give it damage boosts or other features, i would like it more, or just make that idea the feature of ranger, and leave HM out of it. this is kind of me dipping into pf2 for inspiration, but it feels like that would make the ranger have definition i would like to see.
I could see some sort of feature that would make Ranger the most accurate, yeah. You'd need to be careful with it, you couldn't put it at 1, but it could definitely come later.
@@the_twig131 i think a good way to nerf it(if it was a lv1 feature) would be make it once per long rest, per ranger level. qi point style.
I'd like to bring up that if you're weapon juggling to keep a shield in your off hand, you can actually take the dueling fighting style instead of two weapon fighting and get slightly more damage out of it depending on level. Really cool tech for champion fighters in particular.
Ranger is one of the classes I am looking forward to playing personally, specifically beast master ranger, using beast of the land, and short sword and scimitar, with a long bow for back up weapon when you can't or don't want to go to melee for whatever reason. Just using Hunter's Mark, at 5th level you do 3-4 attacks per round (depending on whether or not you have to use bonus action that turn to move hunters mark), you always start with having your beast companion attack, doing 1d6+1d8+5 damage, and automatically knocking the target prone on a hit, no save if it is smaller than huge. Then you follow up with your own attacks, which are at advantage if your companion knocked the target prone, and your first two attacks are with short sword with the vex property so even if you didn't already have advantage, after your first hit you will, followed by nick attack from scimitar if you didn't need to use your bonus action for hunters mark, each of those 2-3 attacks does 2d6+4 damage, with very high chance to having advantage. That is total of 7d6+1d8+17 damage total if you didn't need to move hunters mark, or 5d6+1d8+13 if you did, or average of 39/28 damage per round, which is pretty sweet damage for 5th level. And this isn't even counting in what damage boosts you might get from feats you took, apart from the +1 to dex.
It's not mechanically weak, but I feel it has somehow too many competing class features. Beastmaster needs their bonus action for their pet, but they also need it for hunters mark. And ranger can't go all in on two weapon fighting because they need their bonus action for hunters mark. And they can't often concentrate on their cooler spells, because so many of their class abilities are tied to hunters mark.
For some reason, monks and rogues having multiple alternative uses for their bonus action feels good, but for some reason for rangers it makes you feel you are missing out on something. I wonder if it's because hunter's mark also takes concentration?
In 2014 you could just ignore humters mark after low levels. I think that was good. In 2024 version the class is really trying to push you towards using it.
I think the 2024 version will be better than the 2014, but that's a low bar to meet. The 2014 Ranger wasn't very good, even though the "Ranger Bad" meme did exaggerate how bad it was. They pretty much depended on ludicrously imbalanced spells for a lot of their power, and it was more a testament to how broken certain spells (PWT, Conjure Animal etc) could be than the Ranger actually being good.
That being said, I feel like they're not actually committing to this new Ranger identity based around Hunter's Mark. Most of the upgrades only come online at super high level. Here are some changes I would've liked to see:
- Continous damage scaling: Hunter's Mark should increase in damage with regular intervals. d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12. I would probably put the dmg upgrades at lvl 7, 11 and 15 to follow the archetype.
- Completely redesigned capstone. d10 Hunter's Mark is a joke of a capstone feature. Removing Concentration from Hunter's Mark would be a cool lvl 20 capstone to truly unleash the power of the Ranger.
- Never lose concentration is something I would put at level 7 or 8. 13 is way too late for that quality of life improvement.
- Advantage against marked targets: Move it to lvl 13. We're competing with 7th lvl spells, people.
- With the advantage being pushed down, I would add another buff to HM at the level advantage used to be: You can make 1 additional attack against a marked target once per turn.
I’m about to run a beast master ranger as a halfling. Going for a mounted combatant. We decided to house rule hex and hunters mark as non concentration spells for the campaign and see how it goes. The key spell is beast bond to give my mount advantage on all attacks and I picked up the cavalier saddle to gain disadvantage to hit the beast always on.
I never thought of the ranger as weak.
I just think it's really bad design to route so many features through a spell that will rarely be cast anyway. And the capstone is a joke.
You either need to decouple those features from HM or reduce the heavy cost of opportunity by removing concentration from HM by level 5 (or even earlier) for rangers. Yes, that is a buff to the class.
But the purpose is to remove the lie the class chassis is telling players. Not everyone will fall for it, but many will. And that is bad design.
I had not considered dipping Monk for what is essentially Dual Wielder's main benefit. That is a really good idea, and increases the effectiveness of grappling down the line - which is especially nice on a character that can cast Spike Growth.
Defensive duelist at 4? You can just get the shield spell with an origin feat and that works with ranged attacks and ranged spell attacks. I know it's not an optimized build but like for a normal game with 1 or 2 encounters, you don't need defensive duelist because you're not conserving your spell slots for long adventuring days. You're not going to run out of resources if that's what you're worried about.
I don't like your feat picks but whatever. This kills things. That's all that matters.
How frequent were you moving hunter's mark in these calculations? This is especially important for the Pet Subclasses since bonus action is almost always.
Also what about those that don't have much love for HM? Especially for subclasses like Swarmkeeper that has other stronger concentration spells.
Any class comparison is going to depend on the campaign and DM.
Combat is the easiest pillar to model, but it is not (usually) the only aspect of a campaign. If support/utility features don't provide enough value to offset lower combat value, that's on the DM/adventur author.
The change from known to prepared spells should be a significant improvement, provided the campaign/DM provide sufficient context to allow the character to prepare spells tactically. Rangers (and paladins) now know the entire ranger/paladin "spell book", which should make the utility spells much better simply by drastically lowering the opportunity cost (long rest versus level slot commitment).
Ultimately, though, WotC needs to address the exploration pillar mechanics. Ironically, I think much of the problem has been the ranger archetype of "master of the outdoors". When one class has mastery and the rest (with the possible exception of druid) have zero aptitude, it can't be a satisfying game pillar. Either every group would need someone to play a ranger or the pillar gets ignored.
If bookkeeping were a (supposed) game pillar, the Accountant class would suck.
I think the solution is to make non-rangers better at outdoorsy stuff, with both class stuff and general character skills. The skill list has decent mechanical support for the social pillar (persuasion, deception, intimidation, etc.), and there are lots of support spells, but exploration skills get lumped into generic "survival". Expanding the skills to explicitly include rangery stuff like tracking, hunting, or whatever would provide the same mechanical hooks upon which to hang spells, (sub)class features etc. Once enough characters have access to the skills, DMs and authors can actually integrate them into the adventures. Rangers could thus be exceptionally, but not exclusively, good at these in the same way a bard is with the social pillar or rogues are with sneaky shit.
I enjoy my 2024 ranger. Having to balance what spells I cast is no different than any other spellcaster. I say this as a beast master ranger that needs access to my bonus action. So, as said in the video, I use a Nick and 2 weapon fighting every round. I have the 2 wpn fighting feat, and crossbow mastery, so I have a ranged weapon and a scimitar. My DM is already tired of my 4 attacks a round (8th level converted character),
I feel that a solution to this would have been allowing you to mark a creature as your favored foe when you cast Hunter's Mark on it, hit it with a spell attack, or when it fails a saving throw against your spell. You have advantage on Intelligence checks to recall knowledge on your favored foe and you can only have one favored foe at a time.
Then the later features that buff hunters mark becone general buffs against your favored enemy. So level 13 could be your concentration cannot be broken by your favored foe. level 17 gives you advantage on attacks against your favored foe. Perhaps the capstone could be hunters mark as a free action idk, anything other than what it currently is.
Basically i do not think the 13th, 17th, and 20th level features should be solely boosting a level 1 concentration spell. That design is ridiculous and is the biggest reason as to people being mad at this ranger design imo.
I’m not satisfied with this Ranger. It is not weak by any means and it is better than in 2014. What I dislike about it is that HM competes a lot with their other concentration spells and some of the improvements it gets feel a little late.
Also I dislike the removal of the flavor features. They were bad mechanically but gave a lot of flavor and helped define the identity of the class. I’d prefer they fix them instead, as it stands now the class identity feels weak
I think it helps to know these things now. I think people aren't excited becuase rangers are the kind of do everything class.
What you are forgeting is that EVERY ClASS received a MASSIVE buff, so yeah, the hunter improved, of course, but got far behind than other classes... If you compare any class to the 2014 versión , the numbers are going ti say that the new one is better
To make my point, most of the damage increase you noticed come from changes to game mechanic like the new dualwielding that improved a lot. Every martial class can use two weapons and benefits from that. All other martial clases got unique improvements and the ranger just got the tashas versión printed on the core book. That's almost it
I think the biggest thing people gloss over is the fact that you get FREE castings of HM.
This means you can use HM when you need to focus down a single prioriry target, and then drop concentration whenever you need to. It doesn't matter, cuz it didn't cost you anything to begin with.
Then you spend your very precious and few spell slots on other spells for the right situations.
Also if you lose concentration oh HM unintentionally, it doesnt matter either, since you have atleast 2 FREE castings of that spell. Just throw it up again if you need to.
All the new HM features do is give you more options than before. In 2014 HM was a trap spell, now its actuality useful.
Bonus action clog. Ranger should be able to move hunters mark around without a bonus action at some point.
So far, playing a tasha ranger has been a lot of fun. I think the 2024 version is looking even better.
I disagree that Hunter's Mark is a good spell, at least in a vacuum. Hunter's Mark has been studied to death; It's only "good" now because it's been given system changes and class features to justify its use.
In 5e (no 2024) Hunter's Mark is not only objectively a bad spell past around LVL 4, it's a trap spell. When the Ranger gets in the habit of only using Hunter's Mark, they don't consider that damage is only second best thing you can do in this system next to control.
There's also this constant battle against misinformation about the ranger basically since the start of 5e. Ranger FEELS weak even though it was only a few years before optimisers discovered Rangers have a really good spell list and benefit a lot from multiclassing. Since Tashas, Ranger has been genuinely competing with Paladin for strongest half caster but the general perception (i.e. most people, not optimisers) still had the idea ranger had only become less bad. I think it was people seeing how bad Beastmaster ranger looks and feels in Critical Role that got this impression because it had such a huge influence on the 5e community back when it was smaller. I still meet people to this day that still think ranger post-tashas is weak even though optimised ranger builds have mind boggling damage AND utility with spells like Good Berry, Spike Growth and Pass Without Trace.
Ranger will always have an unnecessarily critical lens over it's perception simply for the reason that it doesn't feel strong.
Well said. I think the 2014 ranger was legitimately underpowered but I was very happy with the state of the ranger under tashes. My current problem with this ranger is that it has pigeonholed be into using hunters mark to access class features. In game design terms I think class features should always be on. Not dependent on me using a particular spell and certainly not dependent upon me using my concentration on it.
Uhh there’s only three half casters. As a multi class ranger is nice now though.
My Druid can dip it, start using a bow & add some hail of thorns for an extra bump of damage plus those elemental d8s.
First off, very interesting build here. Ranger/Monk has great synergy between the 2, shame that it was only a 1lvl dip into monk.
2ndly, while a badass, it's having the same feel as a Rogue or Shadow Monk with the focus on Melee and sneaking damaging. The Fey Wanderer spells that don't need concentration are fantastic, but unless a lot of the Ranger spells removed the Concentration tag, it's kinda forcing the players to either use Hunter's Mark that the class has become centered around, or go with other spells and severely fall behind.
And, I agree, a no Concentration Hunter's Mark would be powerful, but that's if it was kept as is. In a homebrew I made with friends, I had it as a d4 rather than a d6 to take away the Concentration. But if they marked their Favored Foe, yes I kept that, then the damage increased to a d6.
Finally someone did defend the new ranger, thank you for that!
Hunter's Mark could be doing 8d6 of damage with every hit and it would still be a bad feature to give to the Ranger as it's identity. It locks you out of most your spell slots of you use it and if you ignore it, then there's just a bunch of useless feel-bad features for your character, it's objectively a badly designed class. Imagine if you gave the Barbarian spells, but keep Rage as it is, so you just have to choose between using half the features of your class or leaving them just filling soace on your character sheet, this is not a compelling design.
The Ranger could be really strong sure, but it's playstyle clashes with people's expectations of fullfiling it's class fantasy; you can just look at the amount of homebrews for the new ranger to know that a large amount of people are dissatisfied with it.
They had a decade to come up with a compelling desing for the class and they gave us the same old shit in a slightly nicer package and, at this point, I don't think they have a clue about how to make this archetype of character work and I think they will never figure it out.
My issue with the ranger is how despite being a class made for exploration they haven't improved the Exploration pillar of the game and leaned very heavily into the Combat Pillar. While favoured terrain was kind of bad it as a feature to describe the ranger was great, deft explorer just feels lazy, but the capstone is probably the laziest feature. 2024 ranger has not helped i still hate it i dont want to but really disappointed with how they handled it.
I also lost it when Jeromy Crawford went over the Cleric War domain and how by using channel divinity could cast both Spiritual weapon and Shield of faith without concentration meanwhile a ranger still has to concentrate on Hunters mark for an extra 1d6 damage as one of its signature abilities.
So I think that Favoured Terrain is the most surface level loss imaginable. That feature did almost nothing. What we got instead was rituals. There's really good ones that mostly do what the Ranger wants to do exploration wise.
The exploration pillar is lacking though, that's fair.
As for Hunter's Mark, I really do not think that it should be non-conc. Spiritual weapon is once per turn, and Shield of Faith is defensive. Hunter's Mark scales directly with the number of attacks. That's incredibly dangerous to remove concentration on.
@@the_twig131 why should huntersmark be conc but it's ok if Divine Favor is nonconc?
@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar HM has a duration that is 60 times longer and a bigger damage dice.
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar Divine Favor is 1d4 and Paladin exclusive. Paladin is probably using a shield, so it is less likely to interact with two weapon fighting. Heck, take a one level dip into Paladin, pick it up, and stack it with Hunter's Mark. Also radiant vs. force but we'll have to wait for the MM to see how significant that is (I suspect that Ranger and Monk getting force damage for their magical attacks is supposed to be superior to most other classes getting radiant for their magical attacks).
@@XanderHarris1023 You can't just give paladin a feature that improves dual wielding that much, and give them access to the dual wielding fighting style, and then just assume they aren't dual wielding. Even if you do assume they aren't dual wielding, since it only requires one bonus action for the entire spell, it also works with PaM to a far greater degree than huntersmark.
Why is a spell being paladin exclusive a reason to make it nonconc, but a spell being ranger exclusive isn't? I get that exclusives tend to be more powerful especially on half casters, but they're both half casters and it's far more important that spells that an entire half caster class like the ranger is built around are non concentration than just any ole paladin exclusive. I think having huntersmark be in a concentration design space is as big as a mistake as it would be if divine smite was concentration
It’s not that mechanically speaking new ranger bad it’s more like it’s just not…
Cool…
I think it's cool
@@gloryrod86I also think it’s cool, it’s just not as cool as the other classes. Like look at what they did for Monk, they made it cooler and stronger. For Ranger, they just made it stronger but IMO made it less cool by replacing it’s unique features with expertise and making Hunter’s Mark mandatory for a quarter of the class’s features.
No, it's bad. Dont sugar-coat it.
It's funny that you claim you can make this much stronger, yet the only way to truly enhance it would be by casting Conjure Woodland Beings. Without using that spell, this remains the strongest Ranger subclass solely because of the no-concentration Summon Fey ability. The only subclass that could surpass it in damage is the Beastmaster with Conjure Woodland Beings, but that's only through very gamey movement tactics.
The biggest issue with the Ranger class is that a significant portion of your damage later on relies on a concentration spell. Additionally, nearly half of the spells you take also require concentration. Another problem is how heavily you rely on your bonus action-there are about 10 different abilities that demand its use.
Is this version of the Ranger better than Tasha's? Yes, but only because you get Hunter's Mark and spells at level one, along with weapon masteries. Aside from that, most changes are either insignificant or don't make the class stronger or weaker some could even be considered nerfs.
It's stronger than the 2024 Rogue, and its early game damage is better than other martial classes. However, that depends on maintaining concentration. Without Warcaster (which you never took), you'll likely lose concentration quickly in melee. By around level 6 and beyond, Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, and Monks either catch up or surpass the Ranger in overall effectiveness. The only spell that truly helps is Conjure Woodland Beings, but using it means sacrificing three class features, as you're not using Hunter's Mark.
I didnt understand the dip on Monk, but good job!!
My fuzzy friend I think you are totally wrong in many ways and I will try to be brief. Let me whip this out (rolls out his 30 scroll 📜 with tiny type).
The issue is not if the Ranger is more or less powerful then the original (2014) 5e Ranger. It matters vs the 5e revised PHB classes. If the metric was beating the disaster of 5e original then Tasha already defeated that goal and it is not worth having.
Hunters Mark is a horrible thing to strap on a class. If it was no concentration it would have been fine and if redesigned it could have been great. Many many tables don’t run it with concentration as it is but it they simply made one changes a non-concentration would work - 1Make it trigger only twice. That is it it is simple and sweet.
But Hunters Mark is also not great for other reasons. It is concentration means that the new player will want to always cast is and when you tie class features to it you loose class features if you don’t use it. This all feels bad and it is not an experience I think any other core class has. Now a fix on this (if you kept concentration on HM then just let it be that you can maintain concentration on HM if you cast a HIGHER LEVEL RANGER SPELL. Triggering and moving the spell should be done after a successful weapon hit so that prevents other collision like controlling a beast for example. (There are no rangers that do that right). I don’t have the book but this would solve the spell and subclass feature collisions the class suffers from (as I understand it).
The loss of identity is linked to the issues they have always had. The issue is that we have the Rangers as a mix of fighter-Rogue-Druid. But Rangers are meant to do things others can’t and not be a poor man’s Gish . This is an ongoing issue since at least 3.5e. This is still not resolved as far as the reviews have said. I will not see the new revised 5e book (reasons) unless someone tosses it at my head so I am limited on things to fix with out the written details. But until they recognize the solo Identity part of the Ranger I think they miss where people are coming from. But when they remove so many elements (according to the DnD beyond article) and they say you have skills for that, I don’t see this as better. There is a way to make this work but as I am fact limited I just make the point I am skeptical.
They also did not have any weapon styles that they should have had because they go to the core fantasy of the group of heros called Rangers. I will leave those for another wall of text but suffice to say they’re not super powerful but if you add the flavor that arrange your needs.
I will finish this quite appropriately with the capstone, which is the aspirational end of any class. How many times have you seen or heard of players that stayed a paladin just because one day they thought just maybe they could get to that 20th level. Oh just to have a shot to be that ultra powerful paladin - an avenging angel on the battlefield that even the most powerful wizard has to think twice about. Of course almost no one got there but that’s the entire point of them they are massively aspirational. They speak to the core concept of the class and the revised 2024 Ranger has one - Hunters Mark is going from 1D6 to 1D10.
So good. So impressive😂
I did just notice something in your augment you avoided going to level 20. Was that on purpose there my fuzzy friend.😂
Still you are my buddy and I am just disappointed and disagreeing with you. This was a missed opportunity. Monks lost stun lock. Paladins lost massive nova strikes (pleural). And both of those fans passed their beer to the Ranger fans.
People don't like the ranger because they sucked the flavor out of it, not because it doesn't do well in a spreadsheet. They may have well just called it the Hunter's Mark Master. PS - Just for the record, the spell daylight doesn't actually make sunlight so it doesn't do anything extra special in a vampires layer.
I think that the flavour is still there, it's just in the spells. Rangers have so many good exploration spells or specific counter-picks, and they can now switch them out every day, to prepare for the day ahead. As a Ranger Player, they encourage you to think about what you're going to be doing today, and I think that's cool.
Also Daylight now does specifically mention sunlight.
It kinda makes me think Ranger16/Monk4 looks cool. Ranger1/Monk1 seems interesting tho. You get some movement, a BA attack (in addition to the nick attack) better dagger damage, reasonable AC.
You could do Monk 2 any time between level 3 to 7 depending on when you want deflect attack and how much you value 2 flurries per short rest (for 2d6+3 damage slaps) versus Ranger subclass features.
Then take Ranger up to 15 with monk 3 whenever the monk subclass will do the most good (id say at Ranger 8 or 12).
Level 19 you take Ranger 16 for an epic boon and at 20 you take Monk 4 for another epic boon. (Or the other way around for a 4th ki point at Lv19
You'd rather just go ranger until 5 and then go into monk
The bonus action attack isn't something you benefit much from with hunters mark and you'll want extra attack and spells faster
My idea for improving the hunter’s mark features everyone is mad about was a 6th level feature to let them cast and reassign Hunter’s mark without using a BA, and then to remove concentration at level 10, bump damage to 1d8 at level 13, level 17 stay the same, then the Foeslayer capstone to add your Wisdom modifier to attack rolls against your hunter’s mark and bump the damage to 1d12. I think those features at those levels would make it hard for multiclassing to abuse them, like anything past 3 levels can hardly be called a dip yanno?
I’m interested in your opinion on them replacing the Hunter subclasses level 11 multiattack options to the once per turn one target 1d6 splash damage
so let me start by saying that this build is solid, but I don't think people have a problem with the ranger in terms of damage or optimization. there have been a good few who have defended this class and I tend to agree that they are a very good class to play mechanically. and second, is that I can only speak for myself.
firstly, it's what the creator said about this being a brand new class when, in reality, he should've said that they updated the class cause it feels the same they just brought Tasha stuff over and made hunters mark mandatory. and on the issue of hunters Mark, it clashes with other spells if you want to do any other spell, you have to not be using hunters Mark, which the class heavily encourages you to do and it feels as though hunters Mark kinda pushes the ranger to a heavily ranged class because it really feels as though most of rangers abilities are effective at range as well as just not having any defensive abilities, which can hurt your hunters mark until later in the game. other martial classes have some form of sustainability like the fighter and paladin or evasive maneuvers like the monk or rogue.
now, I'll say I don't mind ranged ranger builds, but if your going to say that ranger can use almost anything and still be viable is kind of not true.
but I did enjoy the video and look forward to seeing what you upload next.
You made an error in your damage calculations by assuming Conjure Fey would always be up before Initiative and last the whole fight. Do the same math but give fighter two actions on turn one and rangers 0 and see that fights need to take well over a minute before rangers catch up. Remove Conjure fey and this build is awful damage from level 11 on, which is... exactly why hunter's mark needs to have concentration removed. You just showed that combining hunters mark with another spell is absolutely fine, you just removed concentration from the other spell instead. And even then, it's sub par because you don't outclass the fighter until turn two, at which point you are 68 damage behind at level 11 on. You also erred in assuming crossbow fighter is the baseline, when that build has range and yours doesn't. A better comparison is Polearm fighter which can take Great Weapon fighting for an extra 4 damage per hit on 4 attacks by level 11, or 5 damage per hit by level 13. But even still using crossbow as the comparison, which is unfair to fighter, you're build takes 11 turns to surpass fighter by level 12, longer than the duration of the spell. (I did 68 divided by 5.7, which was your damage lead). By level 13, with the bigger fey, it takes 6.2 or basically 7 turns to surpass fighter, which is more doable, but even then, damage now beats damage later, so I'd say practically you'd need an 8 or 9 turn fight to really break even in value, 10 turns exactly to be stronger, since by turn 11 your fey is gone and they go back to outpacing you. Our most favorable upper level is 16, when our lead extends to 18.77 and fighter lacks a second action surge. Here, we see that by turn 4 we outpace them, which is actually fair, and by quite a bit. I'd say we are bit above even on value by turn 4, considering the delay, so 5+ turn fights are favorable to us, but this fighter has no subclass features or feats! We had to use our subclass and good feats just to challenge them!
Tl;dr, this build shows a ranger who is passably decent, but almost entirely inferior to other martials in dpr. Maybe your utility and healing can close the gap and maybe you are still a valuable teammate, but that's a tough ask against eldritch knights and battlemasters with their bonus d8 to all stealth and initiative and insight and other checks and d10s to any skill they need several times a day, or barbarian's actually good stealth checks now. Utility is present in all classes, although moreso in the ranger than the other martials, so they have something going for them.
Thanks for the math breakdown. I wasn’t sure if they were including action surge or not lol.
I had a panicked moment where you took only 1 expertise at level 9 and had to look up if you only got 1 in the phb
It seems you missed an expertise, or I have hearing problems
Yeah, I missed one.
To me, the 5.24 ranger is very similar to the 4E ranger. A mechanically really strong class (in that system, it was one of the best Strikers) but that has the flavour of a wet piece of cardboard. Sure, the abilities have cool, ranger-y names, but that's about as far as the taste of it goes. Overall, it is the exact opposite of 5E's ranger. In 5E, a ranger had a lot of flavour but almost no good mechanics until they released the xanathar subclasses. Now, the ranger has a lot of damage and versatility, but loses so much flavour, and that's kinda sad.
Hey Twig. Good to see you.
Thanks for being the first to say it's good
Instant thumbs-up for Ranger defense
Same, it's mad underrated
What is the 6th level ranger feature mentioned at the start of the video? I only see roving.
I think the power level of the new ranger is good enough, but the overall design is just very annoying with the big emphasis on Hunters Mark, that goes against so many of the other things you want to do. If you want to use it you have to concentrate on it and it also uses up your bonus action many of your turns, so many rangers will end up not using Hunters Mark and it will just feel like a slap in the face every time you get an ability that improves Hunters Mark.
If they wanted to make Hunters Mark a core feature of the Ranger the Relentless Hunter ability should have been that Hunters Mark don't require concentration and there could have been another ability that allowed you to change the target of Hunters Mark as part of the attack.
Another idea could be alternative abilities you could choose instead of the Hunters Mark abilities for the Rangers that don't use Hunters Mark anyway.
To me, I think it's pretty strong, but I just find it wildly boring and with some low expression. It's not flavorful and its core mechanic could really use spice and identity.
I fundamentally disagree on your point against hunter’s mark not being concentration, specifically on that valor bard, because on said valor bard, it is absolutely a waste of levels and a bonus action. 1d6 damage per hit is at best a drop in the bucket in comparison to conjure minor elementals.
Relative to other classes, particularly casters, hunters mark losing concentration (maybe at 13th level) is inoffensive at worst and reasonable otherwise. Your precast of summon fey does take turns worth noting, since the duration is very short. Take for example, animal shapes granting 90+ thp to everything within 30 feet of you as many times as you have actions throughout the day at 15th level. Conjure minor elementals lasting 10+ minutes and adding 6d8 damage per hit at that level, etc.
Hell, even just polymorph can grant over a hundred thp at level 7, that you don’t even have to keep concentration on to maintain. That’s vastly more powerful than a later level removal of hunters mark’s concentration as a feature.
This isn’t to say I disagree that ranger can be decent, but rather to say it isn’t keeping up with those truely *good* classes, if that makes sense.
"Rangers haven't lost their identity"
Okay, so what does "Favored Enemy" mean now that it works on everybody?
Hey, nice build 👍🏻
A quick question tho: You said something about Valor bard with a lot of attacks, I couldn't find a video or smt of it.
Is there someplace I can find a write up or video?
Or is it just a thought that came from combining Valor with warlock, two weapon fighting and possibly fighter for action surge and weapon mastery?
The basic concept is that you get a Valour Bard up to level 10, grab Conjure Minor Elementals, then multiclass Warlock 1. Grab Nick somehow as well if you want. Multiclassing Paladin or Fighter are probably the best options.
Conjure Minor Elementals is a 4th level spell that gives you +2d8 damage on every attack against an enemy within 15 feet. It's kind of like Spirit Shroud. The issue is that for every level you upcast it, you add another 2d8. Cast that at 6th level and suddenly you're doing +6d8 on every hit.
The Valour Bard also gets something similar to the Bladesinger's Extra Attack, so you can swap out one of your attacks for 3+ Eldritch Blasts, each of which also gets the Conjure Minor Elementals boost. You can get 7 attacks easily, 8 with a bit of optimisation, and the most I've seen was 13 attacks, each one getting +12d8.
Treantmonk should have a video coming out about this build at some point, don't think it's up yet though. He was getting something like 250 DPR though. It's insane.
@@the_twig131 yeah that's about what I had in mind too
It seems like you have access to the new PHB already, if you do could you clear up for me whether action surge would allow for a second nick attack as part of the second action? I can't seem to find the exact wording of nick and action surge no matter where I look so I can't confirm for myself yet
And what optimization for 8 attacks? I see 7 with nick and dual wilder bonus action attack + 4 eb and 1 normal attack, as well as 5 extra attacks using action surge should Nick not work with it, but how the extra attack?
Reaction with smt like sentinel?
Or smt obvious I'm missing?
The Light weapon attack is once per turn, so Action Surge does not give you another Nick attack.
As for 8 attacks, there's a couple of ways to do it, but the easiest is by getting a weapon with the Cleave mastery.
@@the_twig131 damn so they updated that wording...
New ranger good except where it isn't.
The Ranger was never meant to be a DPS class yes in 2014 they can do good damage but that was not The main function of the class. And you could say because of how the original martial classes were, it had to pick up the slack, but now that's not the case.
Also I'm always a fan of someone doing a video defending a class, but I don't like it when they use multiclassing if you're going to defend a class, defend it as a pure build no class should have to rely on multi classing to be validated for.
To be fair, given the lackluster capstone, it is unlikely anyone will ever go all 20 levels into Ranger. There are just too many single-level dips that outclass it. For example, Paladin gives you more Weapon Mastery, more spell access like Divine Favor (to get that d4 damage you lose; concentration not required) and Lay on Hands.
Actually, Ranger was always a DPS class until 5e just like fighter. In 4e it was specifically a DPS class introducing the super lame Hunter's Mark from MMOs. In 5e it's just a weaker class than every other option even with the Tasha improvements which are good after all. It's a crap fighter crap rogue crap barbarian master of nothing. At least Bards get secrets and a lot of support function.
The Paladin was never intended to be a DPS class, but MMOs happened and here we are.
First of all, let's make one thing clear, this isn't 1-20 ranger build. The fact that you need to multiclass already said a lot about their certain higher level feature.
Also, the lack of SCALING of their feature is what make them so bad! You can multiclass a few level to a monk and get a mediocre improvement, while dipping a few into a ranger already give you A LOT. This class is like a dipping sauce than the complete dish itself.
Level 20 feature is a joke, and even worse than their 2014 feature.
Also, this feels more like a Hunter's mark class, not Ranger.
Hunters Mark sucks up so much power budget it robs the imagination from exploring new game design. Rangers don’t get their own versions of brutal strikes or cunning strikes, and these new features try to pass off HM as a class feature without just making it one. Why not play with new reactions that no other class has, and debuffs like removing resistance, adding vulnerability for one turn to your weapon attacks, or buffs to initiative or creating their own cover? There are more ways to imagine a single-target specialist than HM. For exploration, bake in the old Outlander bg, make Hunters Lore a base class feature, heck, give them advantage on skill checks in any wilderness. Rangers should be adaptive, versatile improvisers, making something out of nothing and surviving. They balance on the edge between nature and civilization. That is way more identity than anything they get in the new PHB. These changes feel like a lack of creativity resulting from the same panic of starting your project the night before it’s due. It makes you wonder if they even understood the assignment.
Haven't been keeping up too much with the new edition, so I didn't know that... they didn't change thename of Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style. I mean... seriously!?
The name is the same, they just moved it into the Feats section. I'm not entirely sure why to be honest.
As I sat and read through the 2024 PHB, I came to a realization.
Ranger, is the druid version of Bard, but terribly implemented.
All of the "Hunters" abilities shouldn't be a subclass. They should be "invocations".
The ranger isn't exactly a bad class. But, I just don't like that they choose to focus on Hunter's Mark. Its a bad spell, I with that they got better core features.
Sure, you could always do what you do in 2014 that being to ignore bad features and only focus on the good. I just hoping for the core of ranger to be brought up, not down..
16:54 I'll only really critique this point, and the larger one about Hunter's Mark, because otherwise your video has done a great job explaining how the Ranger is a good class in 2024.
"It hasn't lost it's identity" I believe is patently false. The loss of Favored Foe/Terrain and Primeval Awareness are massive hits to Rangers previous identity as the master of exploration and hunting (or what I'll glibly refer to as mechanized specism). Skills and some minor mobility bonuses pale in comparison to practically eliminating the Exploration Pillar entirely.
I actually believe that design was BAD for the game due to how little support even existed for Exploration to begin with, but it was a core element of the Ranger fantasy going into 5e that is now all but lost.
They sacrificed Rangers massive explorative identity in favor of a dramatic improvement to their combat abilities and some more generic utility features. That isn't BAD, but it is a significant departure from prior, and IMO ignores how other Half-Casters can have core defining features that don't just feel like Ribbons, like what Paladin and Artificer have. If Ranger had powerful and useful abilities on par with Aura of Protection, Find Steed, Divine/Improved Divine Smite, and Channel Divinities, I think Ranger could much more effectively occupy a real niche beyond "Fighter with some naturey stuff and spells".
To the ultimate point about Hunter's Mark, it is strong, don't get me wrong, especially given how many more attacks a Ranger can conceivably dish out. But as I pointed out above with the sacrifice of identity in favor of combat proficiency, Hunter's Mark dominates a vast portion of the Ranger's power budget and mechanical framework, without amounting to much more than a DPR boost. I'll admit I love how the Hunter subclass can learn details about a Marked foe, and I think had they leaned dramatically further into thay design rather than the other HM features most people would be significantly more happy with the final product.
Ultimately HM is almost exclusively a DPR boost, which primarily came at the cost of it's Explorative and Hunter fantasies, which I find really disapponting.
Great video overall, though!
So I am going to rebut this, because I think that the improvements to spellcasting do exactly the what you would want out of Favoured Terrain. The ability to swap out spells means that you can have the spells that you need for the day ahead.
In the video I gave the examples of Water Breating for boat sessions and Daylight for storming the Vampire's lair, but you also have things like Locate Animals or Plants for a more hunty session or a fetch quest, Beast Sense for scouting from further away than the Wizard's familiar can, Nondetection to prevent scrying, at high levels Commune with Nature can tell you a whole bunch, Pass Without Trace and Rope Trick can help stealth operations, Darkvision means that your human friend won't need a torch when you go down into the haunted mine, and more stuff too. Rather than choosing that you're going to be really good on the coast at level 1, you now plan for the day ahead.
@@the_twig131I don't disagree that spells, basically what Rangers inherit from their Druid Lineage, can absolutely cover a variety of explorative and utility elements.
But, and perhaps this might just be more of a preference than literal mechanical issue, I'd rather a Rangers niche come from their class features rather than their spells, similar to how Artificers and Paladins support their niche through their class features, with spells simply providing additional background feature support.
CAN a 2024 Ranger "Range" more and more reliably than a 2014 Ranger? I think I'd agree with you that the answer is yes, but I primarily take issue with the WAY this occurs, and specifically that relationship with the Ranger identity of master survivalist and explorer in their core chassis.
I admittedly may just be too picky here, but I'd prefer spells to supplement the Ranger's strong class fantasy, not functionally BE the class fantasy.
@@TyphosTheD What class features do paladins get that supports their non-combat niches?
Their noncasting class features are "turn a spell slots into a pittance of DPR" "give some healing," "give everyone a save buff and fear immunity" and "give myself an especially resilient horse." Only the horse and the bonus to saves vs traps or hazards could even be considered out of combat.
Meanwhile rangers get hours upon hours a day of advantage on tracking a target before it eats into their spell slots, an additional skill and expertise in a skill of their choice followed by even more expertises (say sneaking, or tracking, or wilderness knowledge), Climb/swim speed with +10 to all speeds, exhaustion nigh-immunity (main cause is environmental factors), temporary greater invisibility, and 30ft blindsight. If you need to hunt something or navigate a wilderness, they're your guy.
The only thing that really bugs me is losing the immunity to difficult terrain. That should have been broadened from 'just nonmagical plants' to any and all natural terrain.
@@dragonboyjghMaybe I misspoke, I don't believe I did, but I didn't say Paladins core chassis comprises non-combat features. Their Aura, Smites, Divine Sense, Divine Health, Steed, and Channel Divinity comprise a very strong identity for Paladin.
In any case, to your question, Find Steed, Divine Sense, Divine Health, Lay on Hands curing conditions, and various Channel Divinity effects all contribute to non-combat abilities.
As I said at the start and in the middle, Ranger can absolutely still "Range", and with their greater spell access can likely do so better than before, but the loss of features like Favored Terrain/Foe and Primeval Awareness are huge hits to very potent class identity which are both only partially recovered with the revision or else replaced with very generic skill usage. It appears obvious to me that WotC leaned into spells being a more important factor to their identity than before, and to me that's disappointing.
I’m so happy you made this video! My friends have been saying the 2024 ranger is just the 2017 ranger (Tasha’s options) with flavor replaced with abilities that focus on hunters mark. All the other rule and spell changes have improved the class by a lot and I appreciate you showing this to be the case
Nick is the real star of the show finally allowing us to live out our dual wielding dream. love the build! if I ever roll crazy stats i'm going dual scimitar beast master >:) (maxing out dex and wis)
As a ranger lover throughout the editions, I'm happy with the extra spells and the expanded spell list!
Most of their spells can be easily RP's as using herbalist stuff as well, or just as being awesome.
So your argument is that the Ranger isn't complete garbage so we should be thankful??
Kobold pointed out conjure woodland beings isn't that good since your aren't necessarily going to have the wisdom score to cause a failed save.
Also, looked like you completely focused on melee damage and didn't share the drop in ranged dps now that you aren't benefiting from increased sharp shooter damage. You could easily run a Fighter and do better at all of those things except cast spells which you could make up for by buying some potions or having your caster make up the difference.
Very importantly, the design itself of the Ranger class limits what feats and options you can successfully lean into. You yourself pointed out we don't even want the new Dual Weapon feat. Rather than fixing things Wizards has designed new mechanical traps that will frustrate players. Who is supposed to be dual wielding anyway? Not the monk, not the ranger, not the fighter...
Action Economy traffic jam, feats traffic jam, and multiple attribute demand (mad) without the features to support it make the Ranger a big turn off. Wizards could have given Rangers scaling on Hunters Mark with level 1 d6, level 2 d8, level 3 d10 up to d12.
All primary class features past level 6 are bad or lacking in literary roots and the 2024 Ranger is clearly weaker than Tasha's Ranger despite some minor improvements. As pointed out, the Hunter subclass features could have easily filled these slots and given the class a lot more personality. Every other class gets fly. Rangers lose move through difficult terrain without penalty... You pointed out that Hunter's Mark without concentration as a spell is problematic... Nobody asked for Hunter's Mark to be a spell. This is not a valid design defense for Wizards who is designing the game and could fix this with ease.
Other lost Tasha's features: Rangers have to wait until level 14 to vanish. Rangers have to use a bonus action to cast Favored Foe (Hunter's Mark).
Biggest problem with the 5e Ranger is that Hunter's Mark is an MMO concept not a literary trope. Rangers are originally from J R R Tolkien's work. Paladin's are from Elizabeth Moon's work. When you lose sight of the base concept it suffers. Hunter's Mark never should have made it into class features.
I can live with what we have, but let's not pretend it's bringing heat. D4 just made a Bladelock that does 50% more damage and has more spell and ability utility.
Subclasses: Doom Stalker is cool, but I would rather Assassin. Fae Wander is cool but I would rather Shadow Dancer. Hunter is basic, but Champion is more basic and more useful and again more based.
What are we showing up in Ranger class for that we can't get somewhere else? Where is the identity of the class?
My perceived solutions (many shared ideas from 2014):
A. Most of us would (multiple youtubers) totally go for the Hunter subclass replacing all hunter's mark abilities.
B. Rewrite Hunter Mark as a higher level spell that supports the whole party instead of some lame wannabe sneak attack.
C. Move Vanish back to level 10.
D. Remove bonus action requirements from the Beast and Dragonwarden Dragon. It's not fun, and it's not reasonable for spells to outperform an entire subclass feature. Will people chatter about it and rave about it? Yeah. That's what you want. It's not going to break anything. Beast damage potential is already intentional mediocre as is the to-hit chance without magical item support.
E. Explicitly add the two weapon fighting style feature to the dual weapon feat. Stop gating Rangers in general in areas it's not benefiting the game. The Pole-arm feat should NOT be out performing the Dual Weapon feat in bonus damage. Some of these things are common sense when taken in context, but whomever is designing is knee jerk nerfing rather than reading the damage output.
New ranger isn't bad, it just feels bad to play. There is nothing to push you towards being a roaming Hunter.
They have a couple abilities, and a few spells, but the abilities are too few and two sparce. Not to mention that by moving the rest of the classes flavor to spells they make them feel less connected to our character.
Objective wise, it's good, but I feel like it soul was sacrificed for that. Yes it was always a bit confused but they focused in on the most generic part of its core fantasy to pursue.
As a Ranger Lover but Paladin Main and overall Perma-DM, Hunter's Mark (HM), much like Divine Smite, shouldn't be used in any and all circumstances. If anything, you should be casting it outside of combat for its main purpose: tracking a singular enemy, may it be part of a group or not.
Once combat starts, the only reason to be changing HM target every turn is if you are killing an enemy every turn, and if you are doing so, you should just be casting AoEs like Hail of Thorns to mow them down and let your summon/animal companion/horde breaker clean up any remaining mooks this or next turn while you focus on your next Big Enemy.
HM as a damage source is better spent on Big Tough Enemies that you can singularly focus on at the beginning of combat and not worry about having to change targets each round. Otherwise, you WILL run into that action economy problem bc CASTING HM ON MOOKS IS NOT EFFICIENT. The extra damage is not worth it when they have low HP. Cast another spell. Entangle them so that your allies can blast them, use your own AoE, do anything BUT casting HM. You have the free uses of it so that you can expend your slots on the big spells when it matters and HM is worthless (which, at higher levels, when you gotta throw big groups of enemies at your players, is almost all the time).
Especially as a Beastmaster, SAVE YOUR HM FOR THE BIG ENEMY. Against mooks, command your Land Companion as a BA to deal damage (You kinda want High Wis for this, sure, but it's a good investment) and knock it prone if possible, then you have advantage on your TWF attacks with a Shortsword and a Scimitar for that Nick Attack. It's better than 2d6 of damage. If you have low WIS, you can even give your companion advantage by Attacking you first, casting Ensnaring Strike as a BA on a hit, then commanding your Companion by expending the TWF Attack from Nick. Or simply casting an AoE spell and using your BA to Command your Companion to go to town on the stragglers.
Ranged Rangers have the benefit of not having to worry TOO MUCH about being targeted if they play their cards nicely, so while damage output is a bit lower (unless crossbow expert shenanigans), you still have the added bonus of greater survivability and accuracy (Archer style), allowing them to invest more on Wis for subclass features or Con for added durability. It is always a choice and you can't have it all at the same time, good melee and good ranged, good crowd control and good single target damage.
So, Rangers: KNOW YOUR OPTIONS, AND CHOOSE WISELY. Single Big Enemy? HM away. Big crowd of Mooks? Mow 'em down with spells and/or other class features. Mix of both? Pick one and communicate with your other party members about what to do. Trying to track a creature to its lair? HM it. Big lair with unknown variables? Pass without Trace and Stealth to survey the area, Speak with Animals on whatever animal life lurks around, or even just cast Enhance Ability (WIS) on yourself or the rogue for exploring ahead and finding traps. Anything else? Improvise. HM is just one tool, very important to the class, yes, but not always the best option, and you can do many different things.
Yes, that is all so incredibly true. Hunter's Mark has a time and a place, but it is not every fight. It does however absolutely have that time and place.
In this particular video I was deliberately trying to stay simple, so I didn't go into this that much.
Also, now that you have so many free uses of HM, it is often fine to just throw it up whenever you have a spare BA. It's not eating into your spell slots or anything.
Pleasantly surprised! Thanks for the breakdown!
Having your bonus action and concentration locked is a huge issue. That their martial attack is STRICTLY AND OBJECTIVELY worse than a fighter further deepends the rift inbetween rangers and the better choices.
I dont understand why the argument isnt simple like this: they are worse at attacking with their actions and they are worse at using spells and cannot use concentration without throwing away half of their kit. They are foeced to use their first and some other subsequent bonus actions to reapply hunters mark.
The argument isnt that they cannot be flexible or be a jack of some trades and master at none. The argument isnt that they cannot be useful in a party. The argument is that the ranger is even less dynamic in combat and is still bad in combat compared to other martial characters. If a magical weapon drops, giving it to the ranger over the fighter who will hit 2-4 times more the first turn is just a joke. In this example extra extra attack, action surge and two light weapon swings instead of hunters mark turn 1. And some nice maneuvers.
The argument is not that you cannot have fun at the table. You could play the old monk without rolled stats, play old four elements and still havee fun. That does not mean the build is good. It is objectively sub par.
Its good to see ranger won't be dead in the water in real scenarios, but ranger fans will just have to acknowledge that spells help fill the gaps rather than define the class. I assume other subclasses aren't far behind on dpr, with the exception of the non-concentration summons.
Also, with epic boons, a single dip instead of the ranger capstone is a reasonable choice without feeling like it's breaking away from ranger-ness.
I've not run the calcs on the other subclasses, but they don't look to be that far down until you get 4th level slots at 13, at which point they could instead be using them on something like Conjure Woodland Beings.
Hunter's mark needs to just not be a spell. Keep it a class feature, as was Favored Foe, make it use spell slots (like old smite) and let it give you a couple of free uses. Making it a spell just kills so much stuff about it, if you're in an antimagic field, you lose it. It can be both counterspelled AND Dispelled, which makes you lose resources, and you STILL have to keep concentration on it
With the new version of counterspell, you don't lose your spell slot if you get countered, so in that scenario you don't lose any resources other than your bonus action. (Open question: if you get countered on a free casting, do you lose the resource? I suspect that the RAI answer is no, but RAW seems to be silent on that.)
Great video and thank you for defending the new Ranger
if you want to play a ranger and feel strong, just play a warlock. :D
Ranger - only class where the capstone is worse than a level 1 monk
Taking one multy class level your loaing out on the 1d10 hunters mark.
Tales of the valient has a scaling non con my mystic mark. Defintly better
now make a rougue build
Yeah, hunters mark is good when you use nick, but it sucks for any other weapons, or any other build that has any other way to weaponize their bonus action, including the entire beastmaster subclass
Sure you can make a good ranger out of hunters mark, with _some_ weapons and some builds it is a good concentration option up to 20, particularly when you duel wield but the problem. The problem ranger has isn't that there isn't a single build that's good, there is you have demonstrated this, but the problem is that the build versatility is just really poor. If you don't make good use of huntersmark you just have less class features that improve your build than you did in 2014, and many of those class features you lost were really flavorful and unique.
And a lot of builds don't make good use of huntersmark either. In fact, it's fairly easy to make a build where the act of casting huntersmark instead of casting nothing would lower your DPR instead of raising it, since it's damage per bonus action isn't as high as other ways to weaponize your bonus action that cost less resources.
Huntersmark, if it was going to ever be so central to the class should have been designed around being a spell that was useful regardless of the the rest of the rangers build, their preferred concentration option, or their weapon choice, and it should have been designed in a way were dedicated rangers aren't as incentivized to find something in their build to replace it, instead of saying "here's huntersmark. It's a spell useful on some characters but 3 class features were replaced with this so you better build your entire character around it" Smite is a spell that fulfills a similar degree of identity importance as huntersmark but it has none of these build restricting shortfalls. Even if you are a polearm master it's not like you would do less damage in a fight if you decided to smite. I'm not saying huntersmark should just become a smite. But, i am saying that features in the class progression as core as huntersmark should be designed in a way where every ranger would want to use them. Especially if you lose primal awareness and landstride to get these features. Huntersmark just doesn't fulfill the niche it is trying to fit
I disagree that they have bad versatility. Hunter's Mark works best with TWF, but you can also do ranged builds that make more use of their numerous movement restricting features, there's a lot of things that you can do with Spike Growth, and at higher levels there's things that you can do with Conjure Minor Elementals.
It is a bit weird for the higher level features to be so Hunter's Mark focussed, but you also have classes like the Warlock which is very Eldritch Blast focussed.
@@the_twig131 Yes you can absolutely make a ranger that straight up doesn't use some of it's class features in favor of using basic martial abilities plus a collection of amazing non huntersmark spells. Ranger loves like myself have been doing that for a while. But that was always the problem that ranger had.
If you are worse off for using your class features than not using them, then you will have a class that is bad at face value, that you have to try to make work by being part of communities that pour over spells to find combos of stuff that's good. The result is a class that most people think is bad with select corners of the community defending, and that was the exact problem ranger always had. Tasha helped fixed that problem, entering a time when most people actually thought ranger with Tasha's was pretty good as long as you only use huntersmark if your build is actually improved by it. But where Tasha took two steps forward, 2024 took one step back. Keeping about half of the Tasha's changes, but removing land stride, and Primal Awareness, and replacing TCE favored foe with one based on huntersmark, whose intense action economy cost means that only builds whose main action attack quantity significantly outperforms their ability to weaponize their bonus action with anything else can make effective use of this feature, while every other ranger is worse off than they were before and the perception of ranger is going to remain negative.
The problem with ranger was always the huge perception problem created by having class features that most rangers are better off not using than using. And WOTC had majorly fixed that problem in Tasha's then undid the fix to that problem for 2024. Even if you can still make a good build out of ranger that uses hunters mark, or that doesn't use huntersmark, it's perfectly reasonable to not be happy about this huge miss in design that is huntersmark trying to fulfill a class central spell while not having any of the qualities of a spell that would be designed for that niche.
@@the_twig131 I also want to add, the huntersmark vs warlock thing is a huge false equivalency for several reasons. The biggest of which being that people did in fact not like that warlock was too eldritch blast focused and WOTC changed warlock to better support builds that don't use eldritch blast. So if anything, it kinda proves the point that basing an entire class around one spell isn't as interesting as allowing you to build the class around any spell, and having those 'core spells' just being kinda good spells you can take or not take
Personally I am of the opinion that it's perfectly fine and reasonable for specific spells to be incredibly important to almost every build of an entire class. But those spells should have characteristics that makes that kind of niche a good design space. Most importantly the spell should actually be good regardless of every other reasonable decision a player might make for their build as primarily a member of that class. No matter what feats, subclass, spells or weapons you use Divine Smite and Eldritch Blast are almost always good spells on their classes. That's just not the case with hunters mark, the huge action economy cost of multiple bonus actions and concentration are simply too build restrictive to be considered good design to be a central class feature. Though, it's arguably not too restrictive to base a subclass around
Watching this video next to Treantmonk's video of doing a TWF Ranger Build...
I don't really understand you taking the Monk Dip, it looks like the intention to was to weaponize the Bonus Action, but you decided not to take a Feat for that because you assumed you'd be using your Bonus Action on Hunter's Mark..??
You also don't seem to be accounting for Summon Fey only lasting a Minute to do it without Concentration. So your First round of Combat will only be summoning and then Placing Hunter's Mark.
I also wonder if you're applying Dreadful Strikes more than once a round, because each target can only take it once in a round.
Treantmonk is also comparing ranger to other 2024 builds rather than 2014 ones. Like a 2024 Monk/Fighter/Paladin, *absolutely* eats the Ranger's lunch in Tier 3 and 4.
The only reason you think this is good is because of the new weapon properties and how they interact with two weapon fighting. The ranger hasn't become better and neither has hunter's mark(which has become nothing more than the lvl 14 hexblade's curse but worse because the hexblade can concentrate on other spells at the same time).
2024 dnd feels half baked in general imo, ranger is just the still frozen part.
Well done, solid build. I will encourage some people I know to view this one for sure.
Ranger needs to be torn down, and rebuilt.
It should have been structure more like a "natures answer to warlock".
Subclasses based either on creature/monster types, or just specific animals for specific bonuses.
They should at least have some kind of "blade" spell. Reverberating Blade.
"Deal 1d6+wis force damage/5 levels" kinda deal, because rangers were meant to flex on everyone in every edition before this.
They should have like, 6 spells. But 1.5 or 2x the spell slots(not level) they currently do, for stuff like a shoving spell, a short 10' or 15' aoe,
A scalable area denial spell, a mind influencer like charm person/monster, a scaleable defense spell(temp hp, ac, or save bonus), a detection spell and a movement/stealth spell.
They absolutely should either have prof with alchemist tools or herbalism kit, or both.
And, all of hunters features should just be rolled into the base ranger and given at the leves the subclass says they can pic. All of them.
Level 3? You get colossus slayer, horde breaker, and giant killer.
7th? Same approach.
Thats it. That a baseline guide to fixing the least useful class in the last two editions.
it's not weak, its just a bad design, boring, one trick pony, which it's entire purpose is to be the best at exploring. And the exploring pillar does not exist.
The main problem with Ranger isn't the class being mechanically underpowered. It's the class theme, core game rules/pillars, and the way the dev team just used the bad design elements of Tasha's and the stuff that made fighter better to update the ranger.
The 2024 ranger is a bad class because it's core class identity now revolves around a level 1 trap spell that you should never cast after getting 2nd level spells, half it's tier 3 and 4 class features revolve around that level 1 trap spell, the game doesn't have functioning rules for the exploration pillar of play, the 2024 ranger doesn't even try to make characters better at the exploration pillar of play, and they abandoned all pretense of the class having the themes it had in older editions to give it more castings of the trap spell.
Really, though, the main problem with Hunter's Mark is the old Henry Ford quote. "If I asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse." The devs asked players what ranger needed, and the idiots said,"Moar hunter marks!"
Hunter's Mark shouldn't be in the game. It's damage bonus should be baseline favored creature bonus damage and be granted alongside advantage on dex, int, and wis checks related to anything tied to the creature and terrain types the ranger is specialized in, and an overland travel bonus that kicks in when the party is in the ranger's favored terrains. This should be coupled with either giving the ranger more favored creature and terrain picks, or grouping all creature and terrain types into a handful of broad categories that cover everything in the game. I use the colors of mana from Magic the Gathering to fix ranger, and I don't see any reason use this Hunter's Mark class instead of any fighter, barbarian, or druid.
Specializing in a foe and terrain is bad design, because if they don't come up your character simply doesn't have those features.
@dragonboyjgh So you either didn't read the whole post or you didn't understand the change I mentioned at the end.
For starters, "What if the thing in the thing never happens?" Isn't the slam dunk argument you think it is. What if the monk never gets an arrow fired at them? Is defelect arrows/missiles then a badly designed feature? No. The DM just didn't implement the obvious character choices into the game. Players should pick early specializations based on what the DM tells them when they pitch the campaign to the players. DMs should also throw the players a bone every once in a while by changing the race/hideout location of a major antagonist.
Back to the fix I use, the problem isn't specializations. The problem is rangers don't get enough and they don't get them fast enough. I fix this by using broad categories that cover everything instead of individual sub groups. At levels 1, 6, 14, and 20 rangers pick one of the 5 mana colors from Magic the Gathering or colorless. At level 3 they get to pick one out of two colors based on their subclass.
On the DM side all creature types, terrain types, classes, backgrounds and factions are tied to one or more colors of mana.
On the player side they get their int mod in bonus languages with each color choice, and when dealing with anything tied to their mana colors their weapons deal one more damage die, dex int and wis checks have advantage, travel speed/distance is doubled for the group, and they roll half as often for combat encounters and twice as often for social encounters or discoveries.
By level 6 rangers have 3 of the 6 broad categories that cover everything in the game, and if we ever do a level 20 one shot they have 5 out of the 6. At that point it's their deliberate choice if none of their specializations come up.
@@CitanulsPumpkin The likelihood of projectiles never showing up in a given campaign, and the likelihood that arctic terrain and troglodytes never show up in a given campaign or if they do only briefly, are two very different scales, and it's disingenuous to pretend they're the same.
@dragonboyjgh Do I need to sign you up for an adult literacy class? I've said multiple times that the fix for ranger is to replace individual creature and terrain type picks with broad category picks. Specifically the Mana colors from Magic the Gathering.
When your specialization pick includes one sixth of the possible stuff to find in the game your ranger will get those bonuses more often than the monk gets to use deflect arrows.
Say you want to go with your example of trogoldytes and arctic. Troglodytes are subterranean cave/underdark dwellers known for their toxic stench and barbarism. To pick them you'd pick black mana. That pick would also cover undead, fiends, cultists, most aberrations, rogues, warlocks, some clerics & paladins, bandits, pirates, spies, vultures, bats, rats, most thieves guilds, the Zentarim, species created through global curses, swamps, crypts, graveyards, the underdark, under-cities, badlands, and sewers.
MtG is more loose with categorizing the arctic. Tundras are a dual land card that gives white and blue mana. So either pick blue or white at a later level.
Blue would also give bonuses for coasts, islands, oceans, underwater, large rivers and lakes, Mangrove forests, geysers and wadis, merfolk, fish, most birds, air and water elemental creatures, wizards, artificers, librarians, scholars, most shapeshifters, and most things with a swim speed.
White would also cover plains, farms, small towns, most humans, halflings, Aasimar, Leonin, Loxodons, celestials, Rhox(Rhinofolk), clerics, paladins, monks, birds of prey, griffins, rocs, pagasi, lions, rhinos, and other savanna creatures, soldiers, fighters, guards, lawyers, judges, witch hunters, inquisitors, crusaders, zealots, and peasant mobs.
Do you see the difference this system makes, or are you going to keep arguing 2014 RAW by yourself?
@@CitanulsPumpkin You're the one discussing personally made homebrew no one else has ever heard of on a video about 2014/2014 D&D.
As for the quality of that homebrew, it just sounds like a mess with a million things to keep track of. Have you ever actually attempted to playtest it or is this just purely white room theorybrew?
Ranger being weak is not a point I have heard, rather that it is boring and poorly designed.
I enjoyed the build and hope that some of my players do try out the new Ranger and if they do, undoubtedly they will have a good time. The problem I see with the Ranger is basically what you said @0:15, its power is hidden. It doesn't take a doctorate in DND builds to find that the Ranger is good in combat, Spells in general are good both in and out of combat, and the Ranger has builds to be that hole-filler in just about any party, a factor that it may hold by itself.
Every other class has some features that at a glance, is a potential reason to play that class over another. The Ranger's answer to that in this PHB is free Hunter's Mark, and to a point its level 10 feature to remove exhaustion. The latter is undoubtedly useful and the buffs to the Hunter's Mark to apply with non-weapons including its synergy with the "1 spell slot per turn" rule do help the class. However, and I understand this is subjective, these lack the WOW factor of a Sneak Attack, Aura of Protection, Deflect Attacks, etc. Plus that capstone which was skipped here as any 1 level dip is going to be a better move.
It’s good compared to rogue
I'm going to be honest the_twig, I appreciate posting a simple build, but the people pushing back against the 2024 ranger have pre-emptively dismissed any kind of build by labeling them as not acceptable forms of proof. (I'm not one of the "ranger-bad" types, but I have seen quite a few knee-jerk youtube videos, people just say they don't care about builds)
Instead, anyone debating against Rangers being bad is going to have to challenge their core perceived problem with the class: Hunters Mark.
They have to be shown how absolutely bonkers it is to consider removing Concentration on Hunters Mark.
They have to be reminded that Rangers cast spells now, and have done so for most of the game's history. If they want a "spell-less Ranger experience" just play a Scout Rogue (or wait till it gets updated for the new books)
And they have to be reminded that it's ok for Classes heavily favor a single part of their kit (Eldritch Blast and Rage spring to mind).
Very good points. I agree.
is it really bonkers to remove cocentration from hunters mark though? Dont get me wrong, it could get out of hand with multiclassing, but i think that if the removal of concentration comes at around level 5 or 6, it should be fine, i mean, paladins get 1d8 extra damage in all their attacks and it doesnt really breaks anything. (english is not my first language, so sorry for any mistakes).
@@bastiancastillo7692especially now that smite isn't restricted to melee sure paladin isn't smiting as often but they pretty much have concentration free hunters mark except hunters mark doesn't get a damage increase until after a typical module has finished
Why do paladins get diviner favor without concentrating, it's just a bit less damage but they don't need to change targets lmao
@@kongoaurius probably because their smites are once a turn.
rangers arnt bad any class and build can be good thats not the problem your understanding its that the class itself is lazy and bad after waiting 10 years for this and the audacity to call it a new class when its just tasha and ua stuff we already complained about wotc is just lazy and most of the gameplay comes from spells and sublclass options im gonna copy paste what i said on another video that i think explains it well, "ranger is the worse class in my opinion not only because there generally weak (altho i think any class can be good if you have ideas and can build characters) but there just boring and this is coming from someone who plays alot of rangers and is currently playing a ranger build in a long term campaign and i got a opinion about it i wanna see what people think. i think rangers are bad and boring because they have no signature ability a ability that alters how you play the game and can be built apon by other options and ability's every other class has one barbarian-rage, bard-bardic inspiration, cleric-channel divinity, druid-wild shape, fighter-action surge, monk-martial arts and ki, paladin-smites and auras, rogue-sneak attack, sorcerer-metamagic, warlock-invocations and pactboons, wizard-spellbook ranger doesn't have any unique ability that the class is focused around so it struggles to have appeal or keep up withy the rest of the party doing cool stuff that's why it feels so subclass focused for ability's and playstyles it needs something base to define the class not be based around spamming a spell(hunters mark)"
I agree somewhat. I think what this video shows is that a ranger CAN be good. But the issue is really that Hunters Mark conflicts so much with other spells and bonus actions, especially the Beast Master.
Also what this video shows is how Hunters Mark is good with dual wielding. But I imagine a ranger being someone who fights at RANGE, not at melee (even though dual wielding is a prominent ranger fantasy). Hunters Mark is not ideal for fighting at range compared to melee now, which does destroy the ranger fantasy a little.
It just needed a couple/few more features that really bring Hunters Mark online earlier, that way players feel incentivised to use it.
And maybe free casts of other useful spells too, like pass without trace or speak with animals would have been absolutely incredible to the ranger fantasy.
@@Sambrostar the last part is what the tasha Primal Awareness ability did gave free cast of mid but useful and flavorful spells and they REMOVED the whole ability in the 2024 but yes why im so mad is cause i love rangers and they can be really good and fun with no doubt i just see how there base class can be so much more i pointed out how every other class has a kinda signature ability thats unique to them and can change how you play and also gets enhanced by other stuff which is fun ranger doesn't have any signature ability there tryna make that ability just a spell that most rangers use anyways it doesnt feel like were getting anything imo its just lazy made for something needed the most attention
You hit the nail on the head. The problem with Ranger isn’t a damage problem, it’s that the class is fundamentally not interesting. You can’t help but compare Ranger and Paladin seeing as they’re the only half casters in the PHB (sorry Artificer fans), yet Paladins have unique and iconic abilities like Divine Smite and Aura of Protection that make them MORE than just a Cleric/Fighter multiclass. I don’t see that in Rangers. If anything, a Fighter/Druid multiclass could do much of the same stuff as a Ranger with a few feats.
I want something that inspires me to play a Ranger and makes them feel dramatically unique at the table and I hoped that WotC would make that happen and they didn’t.
@@alexmiller1800 ye just sad and shows how lazy wotc is was really looking forward to the new ranger caused imo it needed the most work got really excited when they said "its a whole new class" just to get slapped in the face with tasha and the ua favorite enemy (really just hunters mark) infact they removed primal awareness to was really hoping for something that made ranger ranger but its just whole identity around hunters mark now
Thanks for this video! I wholeheartedly agree. I’m excited to play a ranger with the new rules… after I play a sorcerer and a barbarian 😊
Yeah, there's a bunch of fun options. I really want to mess around with World Tree Barbarian and the new Glamour Bard.
My default when people say “the ranger sucks because hunter’s mark” is to say, “You’re looking at the ranger like a new player. WotC gave a bunch of buffs to Hunter’s Mark so the unoptimized player who only wants to cast that one spell-and they are legion-will be slightly more relevant. Just cast other spells.
Yeah, optimisers are not the target market.